By Wendy Hagenmaier
Town Crier Editorial Intern
Venture into the exhibit halls of Stanford University’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts or stroll through the university’s sprawling collection of outdoor art, and you may be lucky enough to encounter Melitta and Rex Vaughan.
A couple with a stunning legacy of service and dedication, the 27-year Los Altos residents have been volunteering at the Cantor Arts Center for over two decades. With an epic record of a combined 1,500 hours of volunteer work completed in one year, the duo represent both the roughly 300 volunteers who make the center tick and the innumerable patrons whose devotion enables the center to thrive at the core of the Bay Area art scene.
Associate Director Mona Duggan said of the Vaughans, “Everywhere we turn, there is evidence of their extraordinary commitment to the center. Quite simply, we consider them a part of the intimate core that makes up the museum family.” Duggan is among those who nominated the couple for the Stanford Associates Award, which recognizes outstanding, long-term service to the university. The Vaughans received the award at a ceremony last month.
Nearly a century before the couple first arrived at the Cantor Arts Center in 1981 - Melitta as a desk volunteer and Rex as a volunteer gallery walker - the center was the Leland Stanford Junior Museum, one of the largest museums in the country. The institution suffered massive damage during both the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes.
A generous gift of $10 million from art patrons Iris and B. Gerald Cantor in 1994 lent the museum, which reopened in 1999, its current name. It has a collection spanning 4,000 years displayed in 24 galleries and a variety of major rotating exhibitions.
Drawn to the docent program during his early involvement in Stanford’s Committee for Art (CFA), Rex began the rigorous docent training in 1989, enrolling in art and history courses and learning the art of tour guiding. When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the center in 1989, the retired mechanical engineer became part of a committed docent corps that strove to sustain the center’s membership and enhance its Docent Outreach Program in local schools.
During his six-year tenure as both treasurer and membership chairperson of the CFA board, Rex successfully led the fund-raising campaign to rebuild the museum and retain member support.
“The museum was closed for 10 years,” he said. “At the time the earthquake struck, there were 1,400 members, and we kept it at that number all though the time the museum was closed.” As a result of Rex’s membership development plan, membership has soared to approximately 3,400.
In the words of her husband, Melitta “has always loved to volunteer.” From her dedication to the Red Cross Blood Bank in Palo Alto to her four-year service as coordinator of nearly 400 Cantor Arts Center volunteers, Melitta has displayed this love of service to the community. The registered nurse and CFA member served for eight years as membership office manager, weaving a legacy of a decade of reception work and four years of involvement in the center’s Treasure Market benefit events.
Melitta also tackled the organization and cataloguing of a new docent library.
“Melitta works to make sure that volunteers are available, with in-house mailing, and generally getting things running,” Rex said.
Rex said he and his wife were “very honored to be recruited (for the award). We’ve made so many friends; it’s been really worthwhile.”
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts is located on the Stanford campus at 328 Lomita Drive and Museum Way (off Palm Drive). It is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday, and Friday through Sunday; and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday.
For more information, logon to www.stanford.edu/dept/ccva/.
