Robert Mullen
Catalog Number: 2020.003.01
I’m not terribly artistic, but I once felt like I was a talented artist — when I was in second grade at Longfellow School.
That was when my art teacher, Miss Drumm, complimented me on some flowers that I had drawn with colored chalk on dampened black construction paper. I’m sure it was a spectacular piece of artwork.
My art teacher, Louise Drumm, was the supervisor of art education in the La Crosse Public Schools for 37 years. For many of those years she was also the only elementary art teacher in the city.
It must have been a challenging job traveling every day to a different school and providing a condensed half-hour lesson in each classroom.
In addition to teaching art, Louise was also a practicing artist. This cheery watercolor of a carnival is a nice example of her work. The painting’s bright and expressive swashes of color create a whimsical scene.
The painting does not have a title, but with a bluff looming in the background it appears to be in the La Crosse area.
Born in Chicago in 1903, Drumm received bachelor’s (1926) and master’s (1943) degrees at the Art Institute of Chicago. She came to La Crosse in 1931 and never moved away. The only exception to this was in 1937, when Louise taught at a school in Hawaii on a one-year teacher exchange, trading positions with a teacher from Honolulu.
Drumm never lost her enthusiasm for art. She felt strongly about art education and enjoyed traveling to distant places to see the art of other cultures.
In 1958, she was quoted in a national newspaper column about her feelings for art education: “We need children who are encouraged to express their dreams, ideas, interpretations to kindle the sparks of invention and discovery.”
After her retirement in 1968, Miss Drumm continued to produce artwork and frequently displayed it locally.
She loved watercolor and often portrayed local scenes in her creations.
She remained active in local arts organizations for many years and continued to give art lessons to local residents, young and old.
When she died in 1995 at age 92, Marguerite Louise Drumm left nearly $100,000 to the city schools to use for scholarships to promising art students.
The name Miss Drumm still resonates with many older La Crosse residents who remember her visits into the classroom and quick chalkboard lessons.
But Miss Drumm’s legacy lives today with a new generation of artists who continue to receive small scholarship awards from her estate.
This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on June 27, 2020.
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