Willamette University art student just one standout among 2010 Oregon grads | OregonLive.com

Willamette University art student just one standout among 2010 Oregon grads | OregonLive.com

Willamette University art student just one standout among 2010 Oregon grads

By Bill Graves, The Oregonian

April 30, 2010, 5:26PM

View full sizeRandy L. Rasmussen/The OregonianAlisa Alexander, 23, who graduates in two weeks with an art history degree from Willamette University, works with curator Jonathan Bucci preparing a detailed condition report of a temple statue donated to the university’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art. Alexander says she wants to become an art history professor so she can show students that “looking is a form of thinking. ... Art history can literally change the way you see the world.”SALEM -- Alisa Alexander strolls wistfully through Willamette University's Hallie Ford Museum of Art where she's cultivated her passion over the last four years and staked out a future brimming with promise.

She passes through the student thesis exhibit that includes her case study on artist Henry Darger, a Chicago janitor who worked outside the mainstream. Nearby is the Print Study Center where she used a Carson Undergraduate Research Scholar grant to curate the work of D.E. May, a contemporary mixed-media Salem artist. In the basement, spreads the office and museum archives where she spent countless hours cataloging art pieces for work study.

"Willamette has been such a treasure," she says as she contemplates becoming in two weeks the first person in her family to receive a college