Freshman Curators Put Paris Art on View

But this showcase is different from the rest of the Ackland's offerings -- students were the main curators of the exhibit.

The students in art Professor Mary Sheriff's first-year seminar "Paris: Representing the City of Light" last semester did everything from designing the layout of the galleries to creating the exhibit's Web site to writing the show's brochure.

Timothy Riggs, assistant director for collections at the Ackland, said the collection of items includes sculpture, drawings and photography.

"The show is a real grab bag," he said. The collection vacillates between seriousness and humor, showing the various pleasures of Paris.

The exhibit is divided into two galleries: the monuments in Paris and characteristic landscape around the Seine River, and the human life of Paris. The human life gallery is divided into sections, such as love and fashion, per the students' direction.

Riggs said there were several reasons behind choosing Paris as the exhibit's subject.

The annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies is taking place in Chapel Hill in March, and Ackland officials wanted to have an appropriate exhibit on display.

Riggs and Sheriff went through the Ackland's collection last summer and made a preliminary selection, but they left the final decisions up to the freshmen in Sheriff's seminar.

Sheriff said the decision to teach a class on the art of Paris was not difficult.

"Paris has a stereotyped image," she said. She wanted to make sure the show featured the city's true soul.

One of the first tasks the students undertook was researching the facets of Paris promoted on tourism Web sites. After more extensive research, the students selected works from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives.

Sheriff said the class was for a variety of students interested in art, history, culture and the French language.

"Some had been to France, some studied French and one student even played soccer in France," she said.

Sheriff added that the class' varying degree of familiarity with French culture reflected the general public's, and so it was appropriate that the students staged the show. Many students, however, had neither taken part in an exhibit nor taken an art class before.

Freshman Rachel Pearce took the class only because she didn't make it into the other art seminar on photography.

"I'm glad I stayed because it was really cool," she said, "but I'd never worked with actual paintings and museums before."

Pearce worked on the committee that designed the layout of the exhibit. Her committee took the size of each picture and decided which frame would look best, then took a drawing of the layout of the museum and determined what items would look best together.

All of the students' hard work paid off with the opening of the exhibit in January. Pearce said that one of the highlights for her was seeing the works hung in the design she worked on.

"I was really excited," said Pearce, who brought friends from out of town to see the exhibit. "My family came, too. My brother even came from Apex."

The exhibit runs through March 25.

The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.