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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, November 12, 1993
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as a professor of art history, Mitchell inspired his students to consider the ideas and influences behind a work of art. He used his knowledge, wit and engaging style to involve them in
As a professor of
Maxine Mitchell, artist and writer, was a strong influence on her three sons Breon, John and Tim, shown here in the mid-1980s.
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To Van Buren, who finished the course with an A, Mitchell's dedication to the history of art was a nalable.
"It infected people," he said. "He was really intense about this stuff. And so everybody else would listen, and there'd be kind of an animated atmosphere, which was really cool."
Classroom atmosphere was Mitchell's sally. Seeming taller than his 6-foot frame and most always dressed sharply in crisp shirts and dazzling ties, Mitchell had a commanding presence.
"Any questions? Any questions at all?" he would begin each class, standing center stage. If there were none, he would step behind the podium, dim the lights and click the slide tray into motion. As brilliant images of art flashed upon the wall, his voice would resonate through the darkened classroom, drawing the students' undivided attention.
He spoke extemporaneously, not.
confined to a written script. With his dynamism, Mitchell could make even an auditorium feel like an intimate setting.
Coupled with his presentation style, Mitchell's depth of knowledge in modern art also engaged students, including Randy Griffey, a Norton graduate student in the department.
One of Mitchell's trademarks was his approach to teaching students to recognize an unidentified work by its elements and apparent influences. He would begin class with two unknown slides and invite discussion about their telling characteristics.
For Van Buren, himself a painter,
Mitchell's emphasis on issues beyond
dates, time periods and artists was
"He had an amazing command of the material, and so as a listener, you never felt like he was just giving you the surface level of the material," Griffey said. "That's also not to say he was talking over your head. He was able to give you the information in many different ways if you didn't get it the first time."
Memorial gathering honors late professor
An informal gathering in memory of the late Tim Mitchell, professor of art history, will be held at 4 p.m. today on the third floor reception room in the Spencer Museum of Art. The department of art history will be host of the event.
James Muyksens, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said the gathering would give those who knew Mitchell a chance to reflect on his contributions.
"He was one of those people, as soon as you talked with him a short time, you knew he was a dedicated teacher," Muyssenkens said. "Before his passing and certainly since then, many of the students have made clear how much of an impression he made on them."
Laurie Ward, director of the Greater University Fund, will announce a fund established in
Muyksens and Ed Eglinski, head of the department, will speak briefly at the gathering.
rewarding.
Mitchell's memory. The Timothy Mitchell Undergraduate Art History Award will annually recognize a student showing outstanding accomplishment. The fund, initiated by Mitchell's two brothers, Breon and John, will include all previous donations made in the professor's memory. Those wishing to contribute to the fund may contact the Endowment Association.
"That's what was really exciting, that paintings embody ideas and that he talked about it on that level," he said.
"I think it's a very fitting memorai," Ward said. "It's very thoughtful of them to match this award to the type of student Tim was when he went here."
Mitchell graduated from KU in 1965 with bachelor degrees in art history and German.
On display at the gathering will be the book jacket for Mitchell's book, "Art and Science in German Landscape Painting, 1770-1840." Published by Oxford University Press, the book is due to be released shortly.
Mitchell was effective because he was popular, because he treated students as adults. And they appreciated that.
Likewise, Mitchell appreciated his students. Almost every semester he volunteered to teach an introductory course. The motive? Mitchell's comments from a 1989 interview provide a clue.
"The most immediate satisfaction of teaching is seeing students excited about what you have taught," he said. But Mitchell's appeal was not limited to his students.
A COLLEAGUE AND A FRIEND
When Linda Stone-Ferrier joined the department of art history along with Mitchell in 1980, she discovered a colleague who offered support beyond common collegiality.
"He would share his own stories about past rejection letters he had gotten from editors, and we would just laugh about it," she said, recalling conversations about submitting articles for publication. "I think it's pretty unusual in academia, or even in the business world, that you have a colleague you can share your disappointments and your triumphs with and know that person will sincerely understand."
Throughout the years, the two professors and their spouses became close friends, meeting for lunch on campus, celebrating births and birthdays and visiting on the weekends.
At age 48, Mitchell was promoted from associate to full professor. By this time, dozens of his book reviews and about 20 of his major scholarly articles had been published. He had presented nearly 30 public lectures here and abroad. And he was well-liked by students, as evidenced by his nomination for the Honor for the Outstanding Progressive Educator Award or HOPE Award in 1989.
"You finally feel like you have a certain command of your material, and you're ready to go on and do something on the next level." Stone-Ferrier said. "You're not at that gathering stage so much anymore. You can go on and do something seminal."
In Stone-Ferrier's view, Mitchell had reached a peak in his career.
YEARS OF THOUGHT
That he did.
In 1962, as an undergraduate at KU, Mitchell spent the summer in Holzkirchen, Germany, as part of the KU Summer Language Program. It marked the beginning of a lifelong love for the German language and culture.
In 1979, the year he was to begin teaching at KU, Mitchell learned he had won a yearlong Fulbright senior research scholarship to West Berlin. Throughout his life, he would make about a dozen trips to Germany, most for the purpose of studying the works of 19th-century German landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich and German theories of geology.
Although he admired other artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Vasily Kandinsky, Mitchell narrowed his scholarly focus on Friedrich, whose works reflected a synthesis of romanticism and geology.
Representing more than a decade of thought and scholarship was Mitchell's first and only book, "Art and Science in German Landscape Painting, 1770-1840," published by Oxford University Press. The book is due to be released later this fall.
In Mitchell's own estimation, the book was his greatest scholarly accomplishment. No one would disagree.
THE MAKING OF A MASTER
Mitchell's interest in science and art reflected influences from a time long before KU.
Born Oct. 22, 1943, Timothy Frank Mitchell was the youngest son of John and Maxine Mitchell. The Mitchell boys — as Tim, Breon and John were known — were the product of parents who fostered love and laughter and sowed the seeds of intellectual curiosity.
Encouraged by their mother, an artist and writer, the boys took private art lessons, working with oils, pastels, and charcoal. Years later, Mitchell would pursue painting briefly but abandon it in favor of teaching.
Books surrounded the boys, from the classics to westerns, a favorite of their father, a surgeon. As an adult, Mitchell read and collected science fiction literature and art, with a penchant for works by author and illustrator Mervyn Peake.
Mitchell's flushy neckties, a trademark of sorts, were another product of the Mitchell home. Handmade by Maxine Mitchell, the ties featured brilliant, wild, floral patterns. Mitchell wore the 15 or so he owned not only for their artistic flare but also in memory of his mother, who died in 1989, a few years after her husband
After graduating from Salina High School in 1961, Mitchell followed his brothers' footsteps to KU. John Mitchell, now a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., graduated in 1962 from KU's School of Medicine. Breon Mitchell, now director of the Wells Scholars Program at Indiana University at Bloomington, graduated from KU in 1964 with four undergraduate degrees, including one in art history. Later, as a Rhodes Scholar, he received a doctorate in comparative literature from Oxford University.
After a brief foray into mathematics, Mitchell pursued German and art history degrees, which he completed in the spring of 1965.
A year later he married Nancy Fink, a French major at KU and a hometown girl he had been too shy to approach in high school. Today, their two daughters, Kristina, a graduate student, and Sarah, a junior, continue the Jayhawk tradition.
In 1967, Mitchell completed a master's degree in art history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
But before he could move on to his doctorate, which he would receive from Indiana University at Bloomington, Uncle Sam intervened. In 1869, Mitchell was drafted into the U.S. Army as the Vietnam War raged on. His superior performance in basic training, advanced infantry training and marksmanship earned him the dubious distinction of being prime combat material. Twice he received orders to Southeast Asia. But by error, he never was sent. He was honorably discharged in 1971.
The luck that spared him from war would fail him in a personal battle 22 years later.
THE NEWS
It began with a nagging cold in the fall of 1991. In February 1992, the diagnosis came: leukemia. Slowly word spread —in the department and on campus.
Some he told personally. Others heard, or overheard. Although he never avoided the topic when mentioned, initiating conversation about his illness made him uneasy.
That spring, with his energy level sapped from chemotherapy treatments, Mitchell handed the reins of his class, Concepts in Modernism, over to Kate Battles, a graduate teaching assistant.
"It was a difficult thing for the students. It was a difficult thing for me," Battles said. "I think it was really hard for Tim. He didn't really want to relinquish that. I think he taught a little longer than he really should have
SOARING
Physically, the final 18 months of Mitchell's life were punishing. Loss of energy, weight and nearly all his halp, including his thick, short, peppered white beard, gave him an appearance of frailty.
But spiritually, some say, he soared.
In the summer of 1992, Mitchell submitted the final draft of his book. Ideas already were churning for a second book, to be based on modernism.
That fall, he resumed teaching. Three hours a week he lectured on ancient and medieval art to 188
undergraduates and met by appointment with one honor and five doctoral students.
Pat Fairchild was among the five. She had begun her doctoral studies in 1984, the first of four years during which Mitchell served as director of graduate studies in the department. She would be the last doctoral student to finish under Mitchell's direction and the only one to go through the traditional graduation-day doctoral hooding ceremony with him.
"It seemed like he was pushing harder, like maybe he was trying to get things tied up; I don't know, being more aware of his mortality," Fairchild said.
That spring, Carol Masterson, a graduate student in Mitchell's signature 20th Century Modern Art class, rediscovered a professor who, frankly, had made little impression on her as an undergraduate 10 years earlier.
Marching down the Hill, Tim Mitchell serves as a commencement marshal in 1991. Twenty-six years earlier he took the same path as student, graduating with bachelor degrees in German and art history.
Certainly his wit didn't faded. Masterson recalled not just laughing but, as she put it, guffawing heartily, at Mitchell's humor.
"I wasn't alone. A lot of students in my class thought he was very, very funny," she said. "He just had a real gift for humor, and he poked fun at himself lot."
Earlier that spring, Mitchell treated himself to a new toy: a royal blue convertible 1983 Mazda Miata.
Kate Battles, the GTA who assumed his class the previous spring, said the car was a source of pride for Mitchell and on one occasion, a source of jest.
"I asked him how he liked it and he said, 'Oh, I just love it.' Battles recalled. "By this time he had lost all of his hair, and he said, 'There's nothing like getting in a convertible and having the wind in your hair."
HIS INFLUENCE CONTINUES
The laughter stopped Aug. 17, 1993, the day Tim Mitchell died.
For most, word of his death brought shock and sadness. For Mitchell's former student Randy Griffey, the news sparked anger.
And revelation.
The next morning, Griffey sat among a roomful of graduate students waiting to take their master's exam. Rumors of Mitchell's death had circulated earlier that morning. Then came confirmation.
"As soon as I heard that he had died, I got really angry, and I felt really stupid that I had spent three months of my life worrying about this exam." Griffey said. "Everything immediately fell into perspective for me, and all of a sudden the exam wasn't as big of a thing."
Even in death, Mitchell had inspired.