Art history majors spend a great deal of time in darkened classrooms viewing slides of art. But not the ten students who took Jennie Hirsh’s, C’93, seminar on Contemporary Art and the Art of Curating. “ I wanted them to think a lot about installation, lighting, and educational stuff,” explained Hirsh, a visiting lecturer now at Oberlin College.

The two-semester course was partly an overview of themes and trends embraced by today’s artists and included some 15 weekend van trips to galleries in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. “Contemporary art is interesting but more daunting than the rest of art history,” offered Lucy Gallun, C’04, one of the students. “There’s so much going on, and it’s so hard to be aware of everything.”

There was even more going on during the second semester. The class was given a modest budget by the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), along with plenty of expert guidance, to dream up their own show and then do everything to make it happen. The outcome of that investment was s(how), a taut and self-conscious exhibit on display last summer at the ICA.

“ They learned not just about art and the culture that produced it,” Hirsh noted, “but about the culture that produces the way in which we consume it.” That “culture,” which sets up the art for museum visitors to “consume,” is the nitty-gritty, behind-the-scenes world of the curator.

Consumption was one of the main topics of s(how) along with ephemerality. The two simultaneous ways of understanding the same nine artworks yielded a third interpretation, according to the class: an art s(how) that “shows how” curators make meaning in the exhibits they shape. Once the students decided on the art and its themes, and the exhibit’s layout, they put together a professional-grade PowerPoint presentation for the ICA curatorial board, which had to approve s(how). “It was difficult to work together,” recalled Gallun. “Even the name—it took forever to come up with the name.”

Working within a tight budget and time constraints, the students had to secure permission to use the art they wanted, plan how to install it in the ICA’s Project Space, write a brochure and wall tags, produce an audio guide, carry out rudimentary market studies and PR, and put up the art on the wall. Johanna Plummer, C’88, the ICA’s curator of education, worked closely with the class, helping students think through how to reach different kinds of visitors. “It’s a free-choice learning environment,” she told the novice curators, who were accustomed to the long and close scrutiny that scholars give to art. “Visitors are free to choose to look at whatever they find interesting.” Many times that “look” amounts to little more than a drive-through glance.

“ I had my doubts whether they could pull off something as challenging as this,” Plummer remarked. “You have two interpretations, but then you’re also trying to put forth that the curator is the person who’s pulling the strings to interpret the works of art for you. [The students] had to wrap their own minds around that and then convey it to visitors.”

“ What surprised me the most,” said Hirsh, “is that these ten people really learned how to get the job done. . . . They matured a lot because they had real-world responsibilities.”