Hands-On History With The Parrish
When the Parrish Art Museum arranges a program for local students, it doesn't mean a guided gallery tour or classes in kite-making. It means having them spend a year and a half preparing to mount an ambitious, full-scale museum exhibit.
This is the fourth such partnership between the museum and South ampton High School, and the result is a deeply researched exhibit on the impact of World War II on American art and culture. Called "Dark Images, Bright Prospects: The Survival of the Figure After World War II," it will open at the Parrish on Feb. 9.
The decade following World War II was notable for an unsettling dichotomy: unbounded optimism and economic growth at war's end offset by fear of nuclear destruction and Communism and growing unease about racial division in America. This duality affected the artists of the period, who were already torn by the art world's own division between the figurative and the abstract.
Behind The Scenes
Some 50 high school students were involved in this year's project, according to the school's social studies coordinator, Joseph O'Donnell. They worked on two levels, one meeting their social studies requirements and the other a purely voluntary one.
Students chose the areas that interested them, with computer fiends loading information to produce a catalogue, for instance. Some interviewed Southampton residents who had been alive and working in various fields in the decade following the war, and one group worked on making the exhibit accessible to primary school children.
Students on an artifacts committee traveled to museums and galleries to select works to be exhibited, while others worked on music and filming.
"They really appreciated the chance to go behind the scenes and meet museum experts that the general public wouldn't have," said Mr. O'Donnell.
Living Room/Bomb Shelter
In addition to the exhibit of work by leading artists of the time, the show will feature personal memory albums, photographs, newspaper headlines, and "Visions of Optimism," a room furnished with a Charles Eames chair and sofa and other design elements of the era.
In striking contrast will be "Visions of Pessimism," a recreation of a bomb shelter complete with sandbags, stacked canned goods, a government propaganda film, and a recorded announcement of what to do in case of nuclear attack.
Mr. O'Donnell stressed that while the students were involved in every process of the exhibit, they were closely supervised all the way.
Among the people the students got to meet, Mr. O'Donnell said, was the world-renowned exhibit designer Ralph Applebaum (the Holocaust Museum is among his credits). The students visited his studio in Manhattan, and Mr. Applebaum himself came out to Southampton to work with them at the Parrish.
Also involved in the project were such noteworthies as the economist Robert Heilbroner and Morris Dickstein, a historian and director of the Center for the Humanities at City University. Sandra Kraskin, curator and art historian at the Museum of Modern Art, treated students to a special visit there.
Come Feb. 9, the public will get a major museum show. The students, to whom World War II must seem as distant as the Napoleonic Wars, have had the past brought to life for them in a way that no history book could ever do. They have also had a lesson in practical, hands-on organization and the satisfaction of an end result that will be seen not just by parents in the gymnasium, but by the world at large.