Few areas of one's academic life have made as much of an impact as my interactions with Bruni Ridgway, as a teacher, supervisor, and mentor. Her enthusiasm, warmth, and encouragement were unstinting and set a model for my own interactions with students and colleagues. I need not reiterate or emphasize the brilliance of her scholarship, which stands sui generis in the field of archaeology. Bruni taught us to think outside the box, to come at ancient material from innovative approaches, and to look at problems in ways that were, in the end, so obvious but required some prodding.
One episode that I particularly recall was her suggestion that connections between relief sculpture and three-dimensional statuary could be teased out through recreations of the sculptural motifs. One day, in the Thomas cloisters, she led me and volunteers Alexis Castor and Joanna Smith (photographer) in recreations of the Three Graces. This exercise not only unlocked various interpretive difficulties in my dissertation, but also provided an unanticipated bonus on the job market: no other candidates that year had photos of Bruni Ridgway re-enacting the Three Graces as part of their job talk.
No matter what subjects we end up researching, some of which may be far removed from the work we did with Bruni, the lessons we learned from her, her kind guidance, thoroughness and precision, and work ethic, continue to resound. I trust that she is able to look back on her illustrious and gilded career with great pleasure, and I am so very grateful for everything that she gave to at my time at ůůֱ²¥ and also residually in my subsequent career. I am pleased to wish her a very happy 90th birthday and to celebrate her life, so very well lived.
Brunilde Ridgway, Rhys Carpenter ůůֱ²¥ Emeritus of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, is celebrating her 90th birthday. In honor of this milestone, her former students, colleagues, and friends have been invited to share memories of their beloved mentor, teacher, and friend. View the list of messages.