Ask the Library

Who is in the portrait at the checkout desk?

The portrait at the library’s front desk is a painting of Wyndham Robertson by Annette Polan (’67).. The library is named after Robertson, who is an alumna of the Hollins class of 1958.

Wyndham is wearing a suit from the Worth Collection, the women’s apparel company founded by another Hollins alumna, Caroline Davis (’60). Starr Moore (’68) made the azurite, chrysocolla and gold pin on her lapel.    The pin was designed to commemorate the successful conclusion of the  $125-million dollar Hollins Campaign for Women Who Are Going Places, which Wyndham Robertson co-chaired. 

She is leaning on several of her favorite books, all but one by alumnae authors: Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith (’67), and under that are two Pulitzer prize winners: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (’68) and finally, Personal History, Katharine Graham’s autobiography.  The yellow and reddish book in front of her left hand is Parties by Elizabeth “Buffy” Seydel Morgan (’60). 

Also in the stacks there are a copies of FORTUNE, the magazine where Wyndham Robertson worked for 25 years; she was FORTUNE’s first female editor. As she puts it, “I left 26 years ago, and from this distance, it is clear to me if I wrote any articles of lasting significance they were not about finance, which was the bulk of my work, but about women in the workplace as the revolution was beginning.   Two cover stories on this subject are in the portrait: one about the first class at Harvard Business School to be as much as 5% female, and another about the highest ranking women in the Fortune 500 in the year 1974.  My research and reporting led me to Katharine Graham, who was the first woman CEO of a FORTUNE 500 company, The Washington Post.  She was also one of the great CEOs, forget gender, of the 20^th century, and another remarkable woman I have been privileged to know.   If I were in charge, her autobiography would be required reading for all Hollins students, so I like that it is here so near the circulation desk.” 

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