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Fashioning a Life in the Arts
 Barbara Starr Wolf '50 was steeped in the arts
before arriving at Colby in 1946. She attended her first opera at age 12 and
took courses at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts while growing up. "The arts were
very important in my family," she said.
Now a chamber music impresario in Brazil, Wolf has dedicated much of her life
to visual art, classical music and culture in South America, where she has
lived for the past 35 years. Despite living on the other side of the equator,
she has maintained a close relationship with Colby, attending her 45th reunion
last summer and maintaining regular correspondence with her classmates as class
agent for many years.
Wolf recalls Colby in the late 1940s as "a very good liberal arts college that
left me well prepared for life in the arts. The instruction I received in
foreign languages, music and art helped very much," she said, "especially when
I went to Europe in 1951." A history major with courses in world civilization,
European history, English literature and Spanish, she also was president of
Hillel and a member of the Inter-Faith Association, business manager of the
Echo and president of the Women Students' Government League.
"It was just after the war and Colby was a more insular place than it is now,"
she said. The College had separate governance structures for men and women, but
Wolf credits Dean of Women Ninetta Runnals '08 for bringing a measure of equity
to Colby's women's program and for being a mentor and role model. "We [the
women] had a lot more rules and regulations then, but she treated everyone very
fairly."
Following her graduation and a brief stint working at Harvard's Widener
Library, Wolf became a sportswear and accessories buyer for her parents' firm,
Anne Starr Inc., which ran women's specialty shops in Wellesley and Quincy,
Mass. From 1952 to 1960 she traveled to Europe each year as a buyer for Anne
Starr. In 1958 she organized a "Colby Night at the Boston Pops," where the late
Arthur Feidler gave his baton to Peter Ré, director of the Colby
Symphony, who conducted his own composition, "Variations on Airs by
Supply Belcher." Colby Night at the Pops continued for a number of years.
Her marriage in 1960 to Wolf Wolf took her to Buenos Aires, where she
immediately jumped into Argentine cultural circles, coordinating programs for
university students and arranging tours of museums and art collections. During
the 1960s, she arranged programs in Buenos Aires on arts and opera, organized
lectures by the likes of Jorge Luis Borges and with her husband was involved in
the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Festival in
Massachusetts.
The Wolfs moved to São Paulo, Brazil, in the late 1960s, and in 1977
Neiman-Marcus asked Barbara Wolf to organize and coordinate the store's
"Brazilian Fortnight" in Dallas. Her experience in fashion and her work in the
arts was a perfect combination for pulling together the Brazilian products,
arts, crafts and cultural programs. The Dallas show led to a position as
director of an export firm that became the exclusive buying agent for stores
such as Marshall Field's and Saks Fifth Avenue in the U.S. and Eaton's in
Canada.
More recently, Wolf organized photography exhibits at museums and galleries
in Brazil and Argentina, organized a variety of cultural tours in South America
and, since 1982, represented foreign classical musicians performing in Brazil,
Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay. Among groups she has brought to South
America are the Melos Quartet from Germany and the Takacs String Quartet from
Hungary. She has arranged tours for Jean-Pierre Rampal and the Slovak Chamber
Orchestra, and in 1994 she organized the first South American tour in 25 years
for Isaac Stern. This winter she was busy working on a 1996 tour by Maurice
André, who has not been in South America in the past 10 years.
Julia Adams, a member of the Portland String Quartet and a perennial
artist-in-residence at Colby, reported that Wolf recently came to a PSQ concert
in São Paulo for an impromptu Colby reunion and that they have remained
in contact since. "Her enthusiasm for Colby was so strong!" Adams reported.
Mule Train
Fifties Class Notes |
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