Bound by Community: A Student-Curated Exhibition

Once they get into the gallery space this intiutive collaborative process occurs; the students are problem solving and thinking on their feet. The space becomes a classroom, a laboratory for the creative process, and an exhibition space where students’ work is on display for public engagement.

In the spring of 2015 the Museum Object class, under the direction of PhD teaching assistant Amy Bowman, curated an exhibit in the WJB Gallery of selections from FSU’s photobook collection, including artist books such as Steve McCurry’s Iconic Photographs and South Southeast, Larry Walker’s Tulsa, and Sally Mann’s Immediate Family. Bound by Community: An Exploration of Life through Photobooks addressed representations of communities and subcultures through the photobook medium. Using objects curated from the collections of Florida State University’s Strozier Library, Special Collections, and the Museum of Fine Art, the exhibition explored the dynamics of the unique photobook medium and attended to themes of identity formation as related to family, class, ethnicity, and social groups.  In preparation for the exhibition, the student curators created a Facebook page where people from the FSU community contributed their own photos for display in a digital photobook, as well as an exhibition Tumblr site. Bound By Community was on view in the WJB Gallery (1085 William Johnston Building) from April 20th through May 2, 2015.