Seventh Graders as Curators

The Ross School’s seventh-grade class has spent the last few weeks becoming what just might be the South Fork’s youngest art gallery curators.

Their exhibition, “The Illusion of Definition,” opens tomorrow at the Upper School and features abstract works by three professional artists, Roisin Bateman, Don Christensen, and Anne Raymond.

The annual project connects students’ art and art history classes to real-life lessons in the workings of an actual gallery. Sixteen students visited the artists’ studios, interviewed them to write biographies, and composed descriptions to accompany each work. They arranged the art in the gallery, will act as tour guides at the opening reception, and will even cook food to be served at the reception.

“The students create their own tone, their own mood, their own title, their own arrangement,” said Jennifer Cross, dean of visual arts at Ross. “The walls change. The flow of the way they want people to enter the gallery changes. The gallery changes depending on the students.”

A seventh grader named Ava explained that the students first had fun playing with a random name generator before settling on “The Illusion of Definition.” One of her classmates, Chandler, explained that the chosen title means the abstract works in the show “can’t really be defined. Definition is an illusion in this case.”

Ava, who played the role of gallery director, said the project was “a lot of work, but everyone had each other’s backs.”

Both students said they will have a new appreciation for all the work that goes into running an art gallery, and said they hope the community will learn something new at the show.

“It won’t be just, ‘This art makes me happy,’ but ‘Wow, this show made me feel like a human,’ ” Chandler said.

The opening reception tomorrow runs from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at the Ross School Gallery at 18 Goodfriend Drive. The show itself will run through June 23.