Students create gallery exhibition of 18th- and 19th-century objects

The exhibition “Self and Sensibility: Women and Decorative Arts in the Age of Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson” brings a treasury of about 50 museum-quality works from the Georgian and Victorian periods to the Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery. “We’re all excited to bring such wonderful pieces to our campus,” said Dr. Anthony Mangieri, professor and chair of the Department of Art and Art History.

“Self and Sensibility” is a collaborative project by 23 students enrolled in the upper-level art history course ART405: Curatorial Practice and the Gallery Experience, co-taught by Mangieri and Ernest Jolicoeur, assistant professor and gallery director.

Learning to design and implement a gallery exhibition 

Students in the class worked in groups to propose ideas for installing the exhibition and identify the best options to create a more unified gallery experience. “The students helped organize the pieces in the show,” Jolicoeur said. “Every aspect of the exhibition was essentially crafted by the groups. The students worked together with us to build the exhibition. They painted the walls, painted the pedestals and developed the layout of objects.”

Sarah Belling, a double major in art history and cultural and historic preservation, welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with her classmates and create the exhibition. “I’ve really enjoyed it,” she said. “In my group, we specifically thought that the color pink on the walls would complement nicely both the theme of the show and the objects. Other groups shared that idea, so it was interesting to see how many ideas coincided.”

Samantha Kahle, also a double major in art history and cultural and historic preservation, was part of a group that created the wallpaper print to evoke the Victorian period. Her group also discussed the display of dolls to better showcase them as a collection. “This class has been a great experience,” Kahle said. “It’s amazing to be creative, share my ideas and do things that I’ve never had the opportunity to do before.”

Creating public scholarship and a digital catalogue

After the exhibition, the students will create a digital catalogue of photographs and essays highlighting the works in the show. “Students are not just writing term papers for class,” Mangieri said. “They are researching and writing about the pieces in the show to create a work of public scholarship that contextualizes them.”

With this class, both Mangieri and Jolicoeur hope to offer more holistic learning experiences in art and art history. “We’re trying to create a more dynamic pathway for students in the humanities,” Jolicoeur said. “We’re trying to develop opportunities for students to work in more hands-on ways, using the gallery as a platform for expanding the curriculum.”

Kahle believes that the class will be pivotal for her future career. “This class seemed really important for me to put on my resume – to have this kind of experience that no one really gets when you’re in college,” she said. “To be able to say as a sophomore in college that I contributed in a gallery is just really exciting.”