The Mercury News (California)
Thursday
A portrait of San Jose State President Mary Papazian, painted by MFA candidate Daniel Cruit, is part of an exhibition on display at the King Library through March 22, 2019. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Area News Group)
The portrait of San Jose State University President Mary Papazian, unveiled this week as part of an exhibition at the King Library, tells an interesting story about the woman currently leading the university and the part she sees SJSU playing in San Jose's future.
The exhibition, "Portraying Possibility," features images of each of the 162-year-old school's 30 leaders. Most of San Jose State's most significant presidents of the past century – Thomas MacQuarrie, John Wahlquist, Robert Clark, John Bunzel, Gail Fullerton and Robert Caret – are captured in oil paintings. Every other leader, going back to George Minns who founded Minns Evening Normal School in 1857, is shown in a photograph.
At the exhibition's opening reception Wednesday, Papazian said it was "weird" to think of herself as art. And, with a humility rarely found in university presidents, she only agreed to have the painting exhibited in such a public way if it was part of a larger statement about SJSU.
"It's really an honor being part of a long tradition at San Jose State," she said. "But it's important only in so far as it's the current representation of something that reaches back into the past."
Her portrait, however, is all about the present and the future. Significantly, Papazian is just one of three women in the exhibition – all from the past 40 years. And while most of the oil paintings depict their subjects in academic robes against a dark background, the two most recent presidents – Caret and Papazian – are shown in their offices in suits. Papazian, who is standing in front of her desk, is in a Spartan blue suit with the presidential medallion around her neck.
"I really didn't want to be stuffy," Papazian said. "That's why we decided not to go with the robe. It was a little too traditional."
The background details add to her story. Papazian's Armenian heritage is represented by a vase filled with Forget-Me-Nots, the flower that is the visual emblem of the remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. Beneath the vase are three books related to her work as a scholar of Renaissance literature, including "John Donne and the Protestant Reformation: New Perspectives," which Papazian edited. And through the windows behind her, you can see the green, rolling hills of the Santa Clara Valley and an image of the San Jose City Hall rotunda – meant to emphasize Papazian's belief in the strong connection between the city and university.
Daniel Cruit, a master of fine arts candidate at San Jose State, painted the portrait and said all those details were key. "We wanted to show Mary's vision of the future for the school," said Cruit, who spent about 100 hours working from a photograph to create the portrait. "In a lot of portraits, the background is just some mountains or trees, but there's opportunity at every step of the way to show what a person is about. We wanted some architecture out there that exemplified that."
And Papazian said that having a student like Cruit selected for the project is itself a message about the often overlooked arts programs at San Jose State. "It says something to the extraordinary talent we have here at this university," she said. "It was really important, not just to me but to all of us, that this be truly a representation of our university."
"Portraying Possibility," which includes a video presentation on portraiture, is on display on the fourth floor of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Main Library through March 22.
San Jose State student Daniel Cruit presents SJSU President Mary<br />Papazian with a study of the portrait he painted of her. The painting<br />is part of an exhibition on SJSU presidential portraits on display at<br />the King Library through March 22, 2019. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Area News<br />Group)