After 150 years, a college is bound to have accumulated some things, from giant papier-mâché models of flowers and a fifth-century mosaic floor to a great environmental activist's Presidential Medal of Freedom. Here is a small sampling of some of our favorite treasures from around campus.
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College co-founder Henry Durant personally ordered a complete set of larger-than-life papier-mâché botanical teaching models made by Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux in France. Some of the collection now resides near the Global Flora Conservatory. (Photo of papier-mâché flower by Lisa Abitbol.)
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The Durant Camellia is the sole surviving Camellia japonica of the four that the College founders donated to Wellesley in the 1870s. Rather than risk damage to the tree by uprooting it when the Global Flora Conservatory was built in 2019, a transparent, climate-controlled pavilion was constructed around it. (Photo by Lisa Scanlon Mogolov ’99)
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The Wellesley College Archives contain dozens of scrapbooks, including a 1919–20 photo album from the volunteer Wellesley College Relief Unit that worked in France after World War I. Directed by Mary Brownscombe Whiting, class of 1908, the unit was staffed mainly by alumnae.
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The carillon, one of about 180 in North America, was installed in Galen Stone Tower above Green Hall in 1931. Its 32 bells range from 80 to 1,600 pounds. (Photo by Richard Howard.)
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In the 1930s, a consortium including a Wellesley faculty member excavated Antioch, an ancient capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and distributed its mosaics to institutions worldwide. Wellesley’s fifth-century C.E. Antioch mosaic, installed in 1936, has remained a cornerstone of the College’s art collection, moving from the Farnsworth Art Building to Jewett’s sculpture court to its current home in the Davis Museum. (Image Courtesy of Wellesley College Archives.)
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John Rood’s 1952 sculpture Persephone, outside Bates Hall, is meant to resemble the bud of a flower, with a hollow space representing the figure of Persephone emerging from the underworld. (Image Courtesy of Wellesley College Archives.)
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At 103, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, class of 1912, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her writing and activism to protect the Everglades. Her medal is now on display in the Science Complex. (Photo by Richard Howard.)
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Houghton Chapel’s Fisk Organ is a two-manual organ of uncompromising authenticity based on antique Dutch instruments from the early 17th century. It was built for Wellesley in 1981 by renowned organmaker Charles Fisk, thanks to the leadership of Owen Jander, then Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music. (Image Courtesy of Wellesley College Archives.)
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On Valentine’s Day 2012, Wellesley College’s Special Collections and Baylor University made digitized versions of 573 love letters between poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning freely accessible online to scholars and enthusiasts. The letters are part of the English Poetry Collection established by George Herbert Palmer, husband of Wellesley’s second president, Alice Freeman Palmer.
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Interdisciplinary artist Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, designed the triptych of windows in Houghton Chapel, which were then crafted by Lyn Hovey and his studio team in Guatemala from 5,000 hand-blown pieces of glass. They were installed in 2016. (Photo of Hovey installing the windows courtesy of Wellesley College Communications and Public Affairs.)
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The papers of acclaimed conceptual and performance artist Lorraine O’Grady ’55 were the first alumnae archives to come to Wellesley College. They include correspondence, exhibition records, drafts of writing, notes, journals, inter-views, audiovisual materials—and her yellow class beanie.
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