Introductory Letter

Dear Visitor:

            Welcome to our gallery! We’re glad you can participate in our exploration of shifting attitudes from objectification to subjectivity. Before you begin your tour, I’d like to tell you a few things about how this piece came about.

            As a future teacher, I know that I will be faced with many students who have experienced some sort of gender-based bullying or aggression. Sadly, many elements of our culture send messages that objectifying someone who is different or lower status is the prerogative of those in power. This message is pervasive in our culture, and regardless of how much we might study it and discuss it in academic and pedagogical circles, it is something that is difficult or impossible to change. Indeed, Rajagopal and Gales (2002) argue that regardless of education about the damage objectification does, individuals, especially young people, are so inundated with advertisers’ images of the perfect woman, that all the scholarship in the world will not have much of an impact on changing attitudes.  And so the gallery tour begins with this idea, embodied in the Facebook group, “Perfect Girls.”

            As you move through the gallery, slowly the object, this idealized version of the perfect female, becomes the subject. With each subsequent object, women slowly begin to take shape as individuals, with unique names, faces, goals, and ideas about their roles in the world. By confronting these nine very different objects, visitors can be exposed to “a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world” (NCTE Standard 1).

            The centerpiece of the gallery is the large installation by Judy Chicago, “The Dinner Party.” It was included precisely because it transforms the objects associated with a dinner party and the potential guests into subjects. The installation, in addition to being aesthetically arresting, shows what people can accomplish when they become the subjects of the piece, as the previous objects have encouraged. By the time you ponder the installation, they will have had the chance to “apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts” (NCTE Standard 3).As they come to the final object, Maya Angelou's memoir Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, this skill will be reinforced, as a wide variety of genres will have been introduced and discussed throughout the gallery.

            As a model for teaching students how to think about and present their insights into issues important to them, this gallery is useful in showing the power of a curatorial approach. By encouraging students to curate their own multi-genre projects, they can “conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience” (NCTE Standard 7). All of those learning objectives can be accomplished through a curated project such as this.

            Finally, and appropriately so for a project about objectification and claiming subjectivity, this gallery forced the curator to think about the methods for presenting such research and information. As would my future students, I “use[d] a variety of technological and information resources to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge” (NCTE Standard 8). As a result, I decided that the gallery (and its electronic representation in blog format) would be the best presentation format as it can be explored in multiple ways. The objects are arranged in an order that demonstrates the transformation from object to subject, but the visitor/viewer also has the opportunity to curate the space for him or herself, choosing which objects to explore first, which to study in greater detail, and indeed which to skip. Therefore, one can “participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities” (NCTE Standard 11). In service of creating a literacy community here in this space, please feel free to leave comments throughout the gallery.

            In his book on representation and visual literacy, John Berger claimed that “we only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice” (Berger 1977). I will throughout this gallery question that claim, but encourage you to make up your mind for yourself, and to think about what it is you choose to see.

Enjoy your visit to Objectivity/Subjectivity!

Gwynne Langley Rivers

Curator.