Since childhood, Lucy Gellman has been entranced by the world around her. She brought that natural curiosity, and a deep sense of learning through the visual, with her to Washington University in St. Louis.
She already has made a significant impact in art historical research and as a leader both on campus and in the St. Louis community, and now she’s ready to take what she has learned — along with her infectious personality — and begin to carve out a life and career of impact and meaning.
“Lucy is a delightful, energetic, incessantly curious young person who has been a source of support and encouragement to many students in our department, the university, and the broader St. Louis community,” says Alicia Walker, PhD, assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Art History and Archaeology in Arts & Sciences.
“Her unusual combination of interests exemplifies the energy, originality and excellence that mark her as one of the most outstanding members of our student community,” Walker says.
Gellman will receive a bachelor’s degree in art history and archaeology at the May 20 Commencement, along with minors in French language and literature and in women, gender, and sexuality studies, all in Arts & Sciences.
Her interests range from performance “slam” poetry and writing education outreach to research into the life and works of several artists, including 19th-century French sculptor Félice de Fauveau.
Last summer, the senior from the east side of Detroit received a Bemis Travel Fellowship to conduct independent research on Fauveau in Paris. Once there, she completed research at the Louvre, met with several Fauveau scholars, and was offered an opportunity to join the research team for a major Fauveau exhibition at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay.
“There are really only five or six people who study Fauveau, and most of her sculptures haven’t been published or studied — she’s a very exciting figure for new research,” says Gellman, who also has held internships at the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Detroit Institute of the Arts.
Next fall, following a summer curatorial internship in the photography department at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, she leaves again for Paris for a year as a Fulbright scholar to do more research on Fauveau.
“She (Fauveau) was a Royalist, came from a devout Catholic family, and would have hated feminism,” says Gellman, who will be working at the Centre Chastel, a center for art historical research at the Sorbonne IV. “Yet she fits into all these early feminist discourses. She produced art by herself, rejected all of the men in her life and never married.
“Her sculptures engage the idea of the female as holy and heroic. After her father died, she supported her mother and her brother on her earnings as a sculptor. We’re looking at a tremendous woman and artist for her time,” Gellman says.
But Gellman has artistic bents of her own. She is one of the participants and leaders of the university’s slam poetry crew, WU-Slam, a poetry performance group that competes, performs and teaches locally and nationally. Although she frequently performs and competes, Gellman’s focus within the group has been public outreach, helping facilitate educational programs that encourage literacy and artistic self-expression for St. Louis-area students with other members of the group.
“My research is very fulfilling. I wouldn’t trade it,” she says. “But when I think about what I’ve enjoyed most at Wash U, it’s sitting down with a fifth grader and saying, ‘OK, tell me about your life. What’s going on? Let’s write about it.’ It’s exciting to see that seed get planted in someone else.
“Giving people the tools for writing and self-expression is a wonderful thing. Just to have someone invested in hearing your story, whatever your story is, helps a person feel totally empowered. I’ve been lucky to have several communities that support my story, and I hope that I’ve helped other people feel that way.”