Exhibition illustrates history of human ecology

If memory serves Artha Jean Towell, it was a much more gracious time than this one, and perhaps also more practical.

Towell spent part of summer ’52 living in the University of Wisconsin Home Management House. She and her five roommates there “did everything you needed to do. We took turns cleaning, shopping for groceries, cooking. We had a daily food budget of $1 per person, and we could not exceed that amount,” Towell recalls.

Living for several weeks in the Home Management House was a requirement for UW home economics majors from the 1920s through the 1960s, says Rima Apple, UW–Madison professor in the School of Human Ecology and the Women’s Studies Program.

Apple also is coordinator of “‘Brides’ Course’ or Professional Training,” an exhibition of archival photos and historic artifacts tracing the school’s inception and development. The exhibition opens today, March 19, in the UW–Madison Gallery of Design.

One object on display will be the silver service that Artha Jean Towell and her classmates used each evening for dinner at the Home Management House. “You were expected to set a lovely table, with silver, linens and nice china,” she says. Several times a week, guests would join them for a meal — “They might be a favorite professor or a lecturer in town for that night, much like Chadbourne Residential College does now. Or we might invite some children from the Preschool Lab to come over for lunch,” Towell says. In addition to lunch and dinner, students also shopped for and prepared the daily breakfast buffet, which accommodated residents’ differing morning schedules, Towell says.

Virtually everything the students did for credit had a real-world application, which Towell herself put to good use when she graduated in 1953 with a bachelor of science degree in home economics and education. She eventually taught science at the old Wisconsin High School in Madison, and also in Georgia and Maryland. Apple says this scientific career path is not at all surprising, given the School of Home Economics’ strong science orientation in those years.

“There was a great deal of work being done in child development and food science, and a lot of the research was focused on the effects newly discovered nutrients had on the body,” she says.

However, things began to change toward the end of the 20th century. “In the 1960s and 70s, funding structures started to favor the social sciences and pedagogy,” and the school has shifted its emphasis accordingly, Apple says.

The exhibition includes more than 40 archival photos and six cases of artifacts, including the aforementioned silver from the Home Management House. The result will be an overview of the school, higher education in general and women from one end of the 20th century to the other, Apple says.

The exhibition honors Women’s History Month and the 25th anniversary of the Women’s Studies Program, Apple says. She adds that “‘Brides’ Course'” is intended as a preview of the School of Human Ecology centennial in 2003.

“There’s a great deal we still have to explore about the school’s history,” she says. “There’s not a lot known about some of the early personalities connected with the school, and many of them helped shape Schools of Human Ecology not only at Wisconsin but also across the nation.”

Alumna Towell says the school most assuredly was on the cusp of interdisciplinary study, now the standard for colleges and universities everywhere. “I remember working with economists, nutritional scientists, journalists, doing room design with engineers, and many others,” she says.

“‘Brides’ Course’ or Professional Training” runs through April 1 in the Gallery of Design, 1300 Linden Dr. For more information, call (608) 262-8815.