The Fourth Grade Project exhibit closes

In the past decade, acclaimed artist Judy Gelles (1944–2020) interviewed and photographed more than 300 fourth-grade students from a wide range of economic and cultural backgrounds in China, England, India, Israel, Italy, Nicaragua, St. Lucia, South Africa, Dubai, South Korea, and multiple areas of the United States. She asked all of the students the same three questions: Who do you live with? What do you wish for? What do you worry about? Their varied stories, collected in the exhibition The Fourth Grade Project, touch on the human condition and urgent social issues. The Fourth Grade Project will be open from Tuesday, January 28, through Sunday, March 16 in the Mabee Foundation Gallery of the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center.

The students’ stories capture the gamut of societal issues that we face today: violence, immigration, the demise of the nuclear family, global hunger, and the impact of the media and popular culture. The combination of frontal and reverse portraits allowed for the development of both personal and universal stories, and derived from the subject care-taker’s reactions to photography in each country. In the US, photographing from the front can be problematic because of privacy issues. In China, it is considered
disrespectful to photograph from the back. In India, parents and teachers made no objections to either frontal or back portraits. In all of the portraits across the spectrum of countries, the children are presented as individuals; however, their stories speak to
greater pervasive truths and problems within our society. Told in their own words, these children’s stories touch on some of our most pressing social issues and common human experiences.

The Fourth Grade Project is organized by ExhibitsUSA, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance.