Portrait of the art historian

Alex Werrell ’13

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Nearly a year after he stepped down from a record 32-year tenure as master of Timothy Dwight College, Robert F. Thompson Jr. ’55, ’65PhD, was honored in May when his portrait was hung in the TD dining hall. As an art historian, Thompson has explored the meaning of movement and gesture in African and Caribbean art, so his pose is anything but arbitrary. Portrait artist Simmie Knox (shown with the painting at its unveiling) captured Thompson in a gesture that the subject describes as a “fusion of the ‘centurion pose’ of football players, meaning ‘we are here to fight for our team’” and “the special war cry of TD, which is ‘àshe,’ meaning ‘make it happen.’”