Writing for The Tidings, Thomas Aquinas College Governor Maria O. Grant reviews the ongoing “Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and His Legacy” exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Caravaggio is “one of the most influential artists of the 16th  and 17th  centuries,” writes Mrs. Grant, an Overseer at the Huntington Library, Gardens, and Art Collections and a tour guide at the Norton Simon Museum. “The show is full of powerful works,” she notes, “but it is also intellectually fascinating in seeing how one artist had such an influence on so many others.”
 
Meanwhile, in a Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) about the role of accrediting agencies in higher education, former U.S. Senator and University of Colorado President Hank Brown cites a famous episode in the College’s history dating back to 1992: “The accrediting body known as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges … threatened the accreditation of California’s Thomas Aquinas College unless it changed its exemplary Great Books curriculum of classic readings, a central component of that Catholic institution’s course work, to make it more ‘open.’ At least the accreditors had the wisdom to back down.”

Finally, two alumni of the College — Dr. Thomas Cavanaugh (’85), chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco, and Dr. Brian Kelly (’88), dean of Thomas Aquinas College — make an appearance in Remembering Ralph McInerny, a lovely story in Crisis magazine by Dr. Christopher Kaczor of Loyola Marymount University. Dr. McInerny, the late philosopher and writer, mentored scores of accomplished young scholars, including Drs. Cavanaugh, Kelly, and Kaczor, as well as numerous alumni and tutors of the College.