On May 22, 1937, Mabel Pearl Frazer, an assistant professor of art at the University of Utah, filed an official complaint with the university president regarding a pattern of sexual misconduct toward women students exhibited by her colleague and department chair, Alma Brockerman (“A. B.”) Wright. Frazer's letter to President George Thomas begins with the reminder of a prior conversation they had regarding this matter, stating: “I told you in substance that for three years reports had been coming to me that I felt it in my duty to pass on to you . . . that two of these girls, Miss Williams and Miss Bartlett, had personally told me their own stories, but that the others had come to me through third persons.”1 She went on to detail the allegations against Wright that students had shared with her and other women faculty members, which included sexual harassment, retaliating...
“Sure a Strong Devil”: Mabel Frazer, A. B. Wright, and the University of Utah Art Department's 1937 Sexual Misconduct Case
EMILY LARSEN is a Utah based curator, arts administrator, researcher, and collage artist. She currently works as the Associate Director at the Springville Museum of Art. She is passionate about Utah's art history and loves working with local Utah artists. She has an M.A. in U.S. History from the University of Utah. Her research and writing focuses on Utah artists and the Utah art scene from about 1880 to 1950.
HEATHER BELNAP is an associate professor of art history & curatorial studies and directs the European Studies program at Brigham Young University. She has presented and published widely on women in art from 1750 to the present. Her latest book, Marianne Meets the Mormons: Representations of Mormonism in Nineteenth-Century France (co-authored with Corry Cropper and Daryl Lee), will appear with the University of Illinois Press this fall.
Emily Larsen, Heather Belnap; “Sure a Strong Devil”: Mabel Frazer, A. B. Wright, and the University of Utah Art Department's 1937 Sexual Misconduct Case. Utah Historical Quarterly 1 July 2022; 90 (3): 196–214. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/26428652.90.3.02
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