I would question the scholarship. This must have been concocted by a “design historian,” but not by a researcher or scholar trained in the discipline of art history. From my vantage point, there is no way that Muriel Cooper would have been in the position of appointing/hiring Jackie Casey. I agree that Muriel was able to endorse Jackie’s hire or make a case for her appointment or recommend her—of course; but to act as appointing head, never. Muriel loved to inflate things a little but also sometimes a lot. This assumption warps the administrative reality at MIT of the fifties, a time in Boston when the category of visually creative people, including Kepes, consisted of either fine artists or commercial artists. (By the way, although he has been frequently credited for design, he was known as a fine artist with a Bauhaus pedigree.) When I arrived in the Boston area in late spring of 1960 , there were lots of advertising and direct-mail agencies, but not even a handful of “graphic design studios.” I looked for equivalent studios I had encountered in Germany, but the few ones that I remember were Arthur D. Little, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, MIT Office of Publications, and Polaroid. The terms of “graphic designer, design director, type director” from my direct experience, were not in any Boston studio nomenclature, roughly until the seventies. Nobody’s job description was adjusted one way or the other at MIT; we were all staffers of the MIT Office of Publications, with Mattill as its head.

Although the term “graphic designer” supposedly was coined in 1922 by Boston book and type designer William A. Dwiggins to describe his various activities in printed communications, like book design, illustration, typography, lettering, and calligraphy, it was not part of the two vital and—at that time—controlling worlds, neither of Boston’s advertising agencies nor of Boston’s book publishers, both of which primarily used the services of freelance “commercial artists” or emerging “graphic artists.” The term “graphic designer” did not achieve widespread usage until the seventies. It had to travel to Europe and return here, having established its differing position from “illustration,” “fashion illustration,” “book design,” and “advertising design,” primarily concentrating on Graphics, Typographics, Photographics, and Information Graphics, endorsed by schools like Basel and Ulm and fortified by their entourage, which influenced and controlled most “design” programs at American institutions of higher learning. Graduate programs in design, 3-D and 2-D, as well as photography were established very late, in the sixties. None existed before the sixties.

We were all staffers of the office. If one would be able to access old employment records of the MIT Office of Publication, there would be no reference to Muriel Cooper as a “graphic designer” appointed by the university. The true reference would be Muriel Cooper as an employee at MIT. Her title would have been as a staff member of the MIT Office of Publications, with John Mattill as its head. Contemporary people assume that MIT’s administrative management was wide open and liberal in the fifties, when this would be very far from reality. Her appointment at the MIT Press, may have seen an advance and shift in the institutional hierarchy. The latter I know little about.

I have always spoken of Muriel as an amazingly emancipated woman, full of enthusiasm and spirit. But at the same time, I have to point out that Muriel, and later Jackie, did not like that they, in the final analysis, were not free from the direction and control of John Mattill. Both, and later on with the help of Ralph Coburn, began to discredit Mattill’s efforts. Yes, Mattill sometimes showed odd behavior and sometimes relied heavily on his managerial as well as administrative rights. He nevertheless should be credited for providing an open and unfettered forum for the development of design.

When Muriel got her Fulbright sabbatical, at that moment she was no longer interested in MIT and resigned permanently. But when, on her return from Europe, she tried to reestablish her freelance services, her efforts failed. She worked with the Boston Redevelopment Authorities, but did not find that work fulfilling enough. She began to teach at Simmons again. She would be teaching in fall and I in spring, not in a design program, but preparing students for editor or assistant editorships as well as managing editor positions. At MIT, she was surprised that I was appointed permanently during her absence. For a moment, she had lost her connection with MIT.