Volunteer Spotlight: Chuck McCorkle

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Emily Bray

In this series, Education Specialist for Public Programs Emily Bray profiles volunteers within the museum. The Phillips Collection volunteers are an integral part of the museum and help in many ways: greeting and guiding guests through the museum, helping with Sunday Concerts, assisting patrons in the library, helping out with Phillips after 5 and special events, and so much more. Our volunteers offer a wealth of expertise and experience to the museum, and we are delighted to highlight several them.

Chuck McCorkle

For volunteer Chuck McCorkle, helping people has been at the core of his life endeavors for many years, taking him to the other side of the world and to The Phillips Collection, where he has a personal connection with some of the artists in the museum’s collection.

Chuck returned in April from Sierra Leone, where he volunteered as a mental health therapist to help medical caregivers deal with their difficult, and often traumatic, work in treating Ebola patients. Chuck had been consulting with Partners in Health, providing exit interviews with medical caregivers over the phone, when they asked if he would be interested in traveling overseas to help in person. He spent about four weeks on the ground in Sierra Leone working directly with medical caregivers and local staff, many of whom were Ebola survivors coping with the loss of their own family members to the disease.

Chuck McCorkle in front of The Colloseum in Rome, Italy.

Chuck McCorkle in front of The Colosseum in Rome, Italy.

Chuck graduated with an art degree from Indiana University and received a 2 year fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in the 1970s. It was there in Provincetown, MA that he initially met and worked with abstract painters Myron Stout and Jack Tworkov, assisting in packing artwork, stretching canvases, and learning what it was like to be a living artist. In the 1980s, after having moved to Boston, Chuck began to see an increasing need for help to fight the newly recognized AIDS epidemic. This became a career changing event as he began volunteering on the local AIDS hotline. Soon after, he began working for the Massachusetts AIDS Bureau developing psychosocial support programs statewide. After receiving his MSW, he became an HIV therapist at Massachusetts General Hospital, again developing programs for clients, including a Consumer Advisory Board for the clinic.

In 2012, Chuck retired from full time social work and moved to the DC area. While in Boston he had been a volunteer at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in both the galleries and for the music program. Upon moving he sought out volunteer opportunities where he could utilize his interest in the arts and music. During one of his trips to The Phillips Collection, he stumbled upon a familiar name: Myron Stout. “I was flooded with tenderness for the man and the convergence in our lives that brought us to be friends. Lots of wonderful memories,” Chuck recalls thinking, “Of course the Phillips would have a Myron Stout in their collection.”

Art has also played an important role in his personal contemplative practice. Upon moving to the DC area, he began working collaboratively with the Shalem Institute where he is one of the leaders of a pilgrimage to Assisi, called “In the Footsteps of St. Francis and St. Clare.”

Chuck has been an Art Information and Phillips Music volunteer at the museum since 2013. He helps visitors navigate through the galleries and offers insights on the museum history and artworks. In addition, he is a music volunteer where he assists concertgoers during Sunday Concert performances. Chuck believes social work and art have similar and very important qualities—helping people understand themselves and the world around them. Both are creative endeavors which can lead to personal transformation.

A Sunday Poetry

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Experiment Station

Gerry Hendershot volunteering at the Phillips. Photo: Emily Bray

Gerry Hendershot is an Art Information Volunteer at The Phillips Collection. Here he shares his process and his poem inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting, Sunday.

In February I attended a three-day poetry workshop near Atlantic City, NJ. Each morning, 100 student poets gathered to receive a one-sheet prompt, then were given two hours to draft a poem; in the afternoon, groups of ten student met for moderated discussions of each poem.

On the day I wrote the below poem, the morning prompt directed us to write about something that was missing using stanzas of 2, 3, or 4 lines, and to include a piece of furniture, a spice, a proper name, and a musical instrument. We had to submit a hand-written fair copy of 30 lines by Noon.

Because of my longtime love of art, I have acquired an interest in ekphrastic poems; that is, poems about art, such as W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts.” I recalled a poem by Victoria Chang, “Edward Hopper Study: Hotel Room,” which led me to think of Hopper’s painting Sunday.

I had recently attended a Spotlight Talk on Sunday, where I heard other viewers comment on its unsettling psychological impact. Like other works by Hopper, it creates in me a feeling of imminent danger, of something tragically missing.

With Chang’s exemplar as guide, and Sunday in my mind’s eye (aided by online images!), it was not difficult to meet the other prompt requirements— proper name, furniture, spice, and a musical instrument. Feedback from fellow student poets led to revisions—which are continuing.

Edward Hopper, Sunday, 1926. Oil on canvas, 29 x 34 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1926

Edward Hopper, “Sunday” (1926)

By Gerry Hendershot

After church, when I view him sitting
on the curb of an old-fashioned
wood plank sidewalk,

leaning forward, resting his arms on his knees,
cigar clamped in his teeth, its tip unlit,
its cold ragged head soggy with spit,

he’s gazing into the distance, eyes unfocused and blank,
sensing—not knowing—that something,
something is missing.

***

Bright sun beats the top of his balding head,
whitening one side of his face,
leaving the other side dark.

He’s wearing his work clothes, his not-Sunday-best clothes,
the sleeves of his white shirt held up by elastic red bands;
black vest, black pants, brown shoes. A waiter, perhaps,

or a barber. But the storefronts behind him are missing
any ads for today’s blue-plate specials, and a
red and white candy striped pole.

***

Is he missing the tools of his trade?
His revolving, adjustable, strop-hung chair? His shelf
full of brushes and scents, precursors of Boss and Old Spice?

Or does he miss in that sharp angled light from above
a rainbow of hope sung by angels with lyres
through windows of medieval glass?

Sunday, what’s missing
from his life
and mine?

Gerry Hendershot is a retired CDC health statistician who has been volunteering at the Phillips for 12 years. He is a member of the nearby Church of the Pilgrims at 22nd and P Streets, NW, and co-founder, with his wife, of its Dupont-Pilgrims Art Gallery, an alternative art space for area artists.

Reflections on a Graduate Course: Is Modern Art Spiritual?

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Experiment Station

Primarily red painting of the head of christ by Alfonso Ossorio

Alfonso Ossorio, Head of Christ, 1950. Ink and watercolor on torn paper, 30 x 22 in. Ossorio Foundation, Southampton, New York

I’ve been volunteering at the Phillips for more than ten years and have enjoyed the perks that come with it—free membership, preview tours of new shows, holiday parties in the Music Room, and more. However, I had never taken advantage of courses at the Center for the Study of Modern Art until the spring 2013 semester.

Phillips Volunteer Coordinator Lisa Leinberger alerted me to the opportunity to audit a course on a topic that interests me: spirituality and modern art. I contacted Megan Clark, Manager of Center Initiatives, and was soon enrolled.

I was a little intimidated as I took a seat in the Center’s seminar room with eight graduate students in art history from George Washington University. It had been 50 years since my last graduate seminar, and I was old enough to be the grandfather of these young women—and the father of our professor, Valerie Hellstein, the Center’s 2012-13 post-doctoral fellow.

But things quickly fell into place. Lisa changed my shift schedule to accommodate my seminar participation. The GW students soon came to be my fellow students. And Professor Hellstein (“Val”), though setting high performance standards, was friendly, accommodating, and accessible.

A highlight for me was an encounter with fellow student Beth Evans when I was at the volunteer desk. We discovered we shared a love of Goya’s The Repentant St. Peter on display in the Music Room. I had written a volunteer’s “Adopt a Painting” paper on it, and, as an intern in the Phillips’s education department, Beth was preparing a Spotlight Talk on it. Later on I attended her talk—it was great!

The required readings for the seminar were difficult, and the discussions rigorous—but they awakened an intellectual excitement I had not experienced in years. I was not required to do a seminar paper, but I did: my paper on Alfonso Ossorio came back with a comment from Val that began, “Gerry, this is quite good.” What more could a volunteer-wannabe-art-historian ask for!

Gerry Hendershot, Volunteer