Dr. Therese "Terry" Dolan

Therese Dolan is Professor of Art History and Women’s Studies - and is currently serving as the Acting Dean of the Tyler School of Art.

She is the author of Inventing Reality: The Paintings of John Moore (Hudson Hills Press, 1996) and Gavarni and the Critics (UMI Research Press, 1981) in addition to numerous articles and reivews in the Art Bulletin, the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Word & Image, Woman’s Art Journal and Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. She has been a contributor to L’Oeil Ecrit: Etudes sur des rapports entre texte et image, 1800-1910 (Slatkine, 1005) and to Woman and Impressionism (Skira, 2007). She has been the recipient of Temple University’s Great Teacher Award (2006) and the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (2002). She served as Chair of the Department of Art History from 1998 to 2004. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2002, 1985, 1984) and the American Council of Learned Societies. She has served as President of the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association and is currently a board member for Art Historians of the Nineteenth Century, an affiliated society of the College Art Association. She is on the editorial board of Woman’s Art Journal. Her current research is on art and music of the nineteenth century in France in the art of Edouard Manet.

Great teachers often have great stories. Therese Dolan, a 2006 recipient of the Great Teacher award, Temple’s most prestigious prize for faculty, is not an exception. A professor at Temple’s celebrated Tyler School of Art, Dolan walked the challenging road to professorship alone, with two children in her arms. “Sometimes I thought nothing was getting done well because I was only giving a little bit of me to everything,” Dolan said, “But my kids always came first.”

Her priorities may be admirable but there is no questioning that her responsibilities kept her academic role somewhat limited in the beginning. “My kids are grown now, but when they were three and five, I would hand them a teaching schedule and say, ‘now, you can’t get sick on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she joked before recalling pensively. “I couldn’t write or get published or travel to France [for work].”

Still, her familial love didn’t stop her then and since her children have gained independence, Dolan seems to be making up for lost time. She has two works of her own on bookshelves, another currently under construction, and a handful of published collaborations, including the January 2007-published Women in Impressionism, to her name.  

“I was born on Park Avenue,” the New York City native said, smiling, "and it's been down hill ever since!" She likes to read and considers herself an avid classical concert fan, boasting two decades of season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan.

“Being here makes sense because not only can I easily get to the culture of New York City and the art of Washington [D.C.] but,” said the 1979 doctorate recipient from Bryn Mawr College, “because of its history, for an art historian, Philadelphia is a great place to be.”

Working on a three decade career at Temple University, Dolan has taught honors classes for eight years.

“I like the creativity, the motivation,” said Dolan of honors students. “They’re always strong writers, so I don’t have to bleed red ink on their assignments.”

She has a poised uprightness about her, and she speaks without hesitance about art and those that make it, legends and their lessers flowing in subdued conversation as some might describe their own family members. This is what she knows. 

There is something special about this North Broad university, she said, perhaps tied into its location and population. “My children knew from a very young age that they could go to any university in the country,” Dolan continued, “as long as it was Temple.”

Like good children, those kids listened to their mother. Dolan’s daughter graduated from Temple and her son is now pursuing an MBA here. Looking back at how much time she spent with her son and daughter, she is distant for a moment.   

“It was fun; I miss those times, even though I always knew it would all have to come to an end,” Dolan returned. “Still, teaching is an extension of motherhood, I love to see my students grow, watch them reach their potential.”

Maybe that is what keeps Dolan coming back.

“I have heard my kids sell their friends on Temple; it really is a great education,” she said. “It is a good bargain with a hardworking faculty.”

Teaching students from the honors department is one of the many pleasures of her working life. Dolan relishes the opportunity to work with a small group of students about material on which she specializes, she said.

“I have papers written by honors students included in my syllabus so students can have examples of the creativity that should be a part of their own work,” Dolan said. “I am really impressed by the whole honors program, especially the kind of attention students get.”

Dolan has stories. She has plenty of them, but it seems what excites her most is to talk about the students with whom the community-orientated honors department allows her to develop relationships.

“I had a student that went to Scotland and saw [an art show] and could relate it to my lectures, so he wrote me,” Dolan said. “Another student, who went to Rome after I pushed her to go, sent me pictures of her; those are the stories I like most.”

-- Profile by Honor Student Christopher Wink '08