Page 27 - Senior Link Magazine Spring 2025 - Online Magazine

MUSIC & ART
n a dreary day in St.
Petersburg, Russia in
O2018, my husband and I
followed our tour guide through
the majestic Hermitage State
Museum to the Rembrandt
Room. Before viewing one of
Rembrandt’s greatest masterpieces,
The Return of the Prodigal Son,
Nadia enthusiastically declared
that we were “so lucky” because
another of Rembrandt’s paintings,
Flora, had been returned to the
exhibit, after restoration, that
very morning. As we stood near a
mesmerized tour guide gazing at
Rembrandt’s portrait of his wife,
I shared her excitement and joy,
thanks to my participation in the
University Interscholastic League’s
competition entitled Picture
Memory.
As a 1960s elementary student in the
far flung Bovina Independent School
District, I had few opportunities to
observe firsthand the works of the
Old Masters, much less a Picasso
or a Whistler. But UIL’s Picture
Memory competition introduced me
to the world of not only Picasso and
Whistler, but also Renoir, Gaugin, El
Greco, daVinci, Monet and Manet, to
name a few.
Picture Memory competition
began for me in Dorothy
Why UIL Picture Memory
Deserves an A
by Rhonda Rhodes
Donaldson’s fourth grade
classroom. After she received
the high-quality prints from
the University of Texas, she
introduced them to our class. As
we passed the prints carefully up
and down our rows, she wrote on
the chalkboard the title of each
painting and the artist’s name and
nationality. I diligently committed
to memorizing all of the
information about the 40 artworks.
Mrs. Donaldson chose my friend,
Christie Trimble, and me as
Bovina’s Picture Memory team
for the spring UIL competition
with our nearby class B schools:
Farwell, Springlake-Earth, Kress,
Sudan, and Vega.
I was so proud about that 1966
UIL Picture Memory competition.
Showing her consistent support for
my every educational venture, my
seamstress mom used a Simplicity
pattern and her Singer to make me a
new dress for the event.
Mrs. Donaldson, likewise in her
Sunday best, accented by clip-on
earrings, drove the Bovina ISD
Picture Memory team in her sedan
to the district meet at Springlake- Many years ago, I recognized
Earth. I can still see the lined paper
the proctor handed each of us as
Christie and I sat at desks in one
of the classrooms. Even though I
+
was nervous, the column headings
reassured me: Painting, Artist,
Artist’s Nationality.
We fourth graders from rural,
panhandle schools competed to
determine who knew the most
about 15 of the 40 paintings we had
studied. Christie and I knew the
information about the artworks
to perfection; Mrs. Donaldson
expected no less. The blue ribbons
went to Bovina!
I was grateful when the following
year, Mrs. Donaldson asked
Christie and me to return to the
team during the second-year cycle
of the same paintings. The 1967
Bovina Picture Memory team
earned yet another pair of blue
ribbons. I glued that blue ribbon
into my bulging scrapbook in the
Fifth-Grade section behind a page
that held valentines.
I have long considered my UIL
Picture Memory experiences a
gift from my small-town Texas
public education. Picture Memory
instilled within me a knowledge
and appreciation of art that I
would not otherwise possess.
Goya’s Manuel Osorio Manrique de
Zuñiga (Red Boy) in New York’s
Met. While studying abroad with
Lubbock Senior Link 27