In 1956, my husband and I moved to New York from Lafayette. I had been SLI's dance teacher and Jerry, an SLI graduate, was finishing a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy. In New York, we felt privileged to be able to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other fine museums.
After we moved back to Lafayette in 1998, we were delighted to find that UL Lafayette had the prospect of an excellent museum, and when the Paul and Lulu Hilliard Museum became a reality, it was a beautiful, well-designed space for art exhibits. The astonishing thing was that, under the leadership of Herman Mhire, the art gallery was able to bring really first-rate exhibits to Lafayette, some of them the same ones we had seen at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, like the Rodin sculptures. The university clearly had a talented, hard-working and energetic director.
We've been reading the articles in The Independent Weekly. We think that Mhire should be encouraged to stay on as director, since he has shown an extraordinary ability to persuade first-rate museums, like the Louvre, to lend exhibits for the edification of local students and other residents.
We had occasion to talk with Mark Tullos about Impressionist paintings, and he readily admitted that he didn't know much about Impressionist paintings. He said his expertise is more in the field of fundraising! It's hard to understand why the university would employ as museum director this young man, however amiable, when Mhire might be persuaded to resume doing his dedicated work for the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum.