Shaping the Curriculum

Before Pollak's core classes formed into a fully accredited, degree-conferring art department, she taught a children's class at RPI on Saturday mornings. These courses were offered between 1928 and 1930. 

Having trained at the progressive Art Students League of New York, Pollak firmly believed in the educational value of studying the nude figure, and she felt that her own students deserved the same quality of training that she received. Dr. Hibbs, on the other hand, knew that the then-conservative Richmond majority would frown upon the college's use of nude models. As the letter at left indicates, Hibbs initially denied Pollak's request. 

Despite Dr. Hibbs's apprehension, Miss Pollak was persistent in her petitioning for the use of nude models in advanced art classes. Over time, ballet costumes gave way to two-piece bathing suits, then to burlesque-inspired "G-straps," and finally—as this photograph shows—to the fully nude figure. Most significantly, the opportunity for students to draw from "life" (that is, from the human body) was a privilege which, at the time, set Pollak's budding art program apart from most other schools in the south.

See Pollak's An Art School: Some Reminiscences and Oral History interview, both on the previous page, for more detailed (and rather amusing) accounts of the School's gradual acceptance of nude models. 

In 1935, Pollak was promoted to full-time Professor of Art at the Richmond Division of the College of William and Mary. By that time, the School of the Arts had grown in both students and faculty, and Pollak had to assume more responsibility in fulfilling administrative work as well as choosing new instructors. At left, she is pictured with one of her earliest and most active colleagues, Maurice Bonds. Bonds joined the art school’s faculty in 1946. During his 32-year tenure, he taught classes in the graphic arts, fine arts, and art history, and he also served as the Chair for the latter two departments.

When Pollak wrote Part I of An Art School in 1948, the School of the Arts was made up of 18 instructors and 500 students, and it encompassed the departments of Commercial Art, Fashion Design, Crafts, Dramatic Art, Interior Decorating, and Fine Arts—each with its own department head. By 1968, the school had more than doubled in size with over 1,100 students, 85 faculty members, and greater opportunities for specialization within each department. Since then, VCUarts has only continued to flourish.

Despite the school's division into smaller departments, Pollak strove to unify VCUarts. She collaborated with Marion Junkin, a fellow fine arts professor, to form the basic "character and objectives of the art school"—namely, "the teaching of sound traditional principles, balancing these by a progressive approach which was to hold up to the student the aliveness and ever-changing nature of art in a changing civilization." [An Art School: Some Reminiscences, 9-10.] Their efforts later culminated in the establishment of the Foundation Program, which all freshman art students had to complete before entering their department of choice.