Bonnie Hardwick Follows Her Passions
Bonnie Hardwick |
“You discover what your real passion is when you find time for it no matter how busy you are,” says Bonnie Hardwick, who will retire Sept. 1 at age 55. “I’ve come to a point in my life, however, when I no longer want to ‘fit in’ my passions. Now is the time to let them flourish.”
Curator for Western Americana at The Bancroft Library, Hardwick will move to her 18th-century adobe home in Santa Fe, N.M., to paint sacred icons, take photos, and work on a book about Richard Kern’s drawings of the Gunnison Expedition of 1853— an army foray surveying routes for a railroad to the Pacific.
“This plan has been a long time in the making,” says Hardwick, “but I didn’t want to leave Bancroft just as a new director was taking over and with so many projects unfinished. Now, with the library in better fiscal shape, I know that my position will be filled.”
In the interim Hardwick also pursued a Master of Theological Studies degree at the Graduate Theological Union, which she started three years ago as a way of healing after the death of her husband. “His death taught me that life is such a fragile gift, and that if you’ve got a dream, you should follow it if you can,” she says. Hardwick received her MTS with a thesis on “Santos of the Southwest: The Iconographic Tradition.” She will continue work on the subject in New Mexico and will probably return to the GTU next summer to lecture on it.
With a PhD in American literature, Hardwick had intended on a professorial career. But then she discovered that what she really loved—one-on-one contact with students and researchers — was best done as a research librarian. She fell into a job at Denver Public Library’s western history department, where she had done research for her dissertation on “Science and Art: The Travel Writings of the Great Surveys of the American West after the Civil War.” After receiving her MA in Librarianship and Information Science, she became manuscripts librarian there, leaving in 1985 to become head of the manuscripts division at Bancroft.
One of Hardwick’s biggest coups at Bancroft has been winning grants for several important projects, among them “Bancroft Library Manuscripts Retrospective Conversion and Access Improvement Project,” “Documenting 100 Years of Conservation: The Sierra Club Records,” and “Preservation of the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records.” She will probably continue as a consultant in archives and historical research.
“I really love the University and the Bancroft,” says Hardwick. “I will always be dedicated to the Bancroft collections. I’m emotionally tied to the place—that makes leaving difficult. I have a wonderful position here—one of the best in the U.S.,” Hardwick continues. “Bancroft is by far the most-used special collection in the country. But maybe it’s time for someone new to take over, someone with new ideas, new energy.”
Asked what she will miss most, Hardwick answers, “collegial relations with staff, faculty, and researchers.” But New Mexico calls. “It’s a spiritual center for me,” says Hardwick. “I feel at home there—the landscape feeds my creative spirit.”
Julia Sommer is editor of Bancroftiana
Volume 113
Fall 1998
Table of Contents
"Sinners & Pilgrims" Colonel Denny’s Journal and Photo Album
From the Director: Students in Bancroft?
Ovid’s Metamorphoses Metamorphosed
Bonnie Hardwick Follows Her Passions
Rube Goldberg: An American Genius
William P. Barlow, Jr.—A Friend Indeed
Plumbing the Depths of the Spring Valley Water Company
Basketball? At Bancroft? The Oral History of Pete Newell
Jean Stone Honored at Annual Meeting
New Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting
