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Blair Students Learn to Display Their Art as Well as Create It

May 6, 2025

student looking at art on gallery wall — Students at Blair learned about presenting their work. Photo by Joe Phalon.

There’s more to art than just creating it. That’s the lesson Blair Academy students are taking away from their Advanced Spring Student Art Exhibit, which runs through May 24.

These photographs were displayed with a map of their shooting locations part of the work. Photo by Joe Phalon.

The show was curated and put together by the students, said Kate Sykes, the head of Blair’s Fine Arts Department.

“This is a group show put together by the students, so the teachers were only facilitators in all of this,” Sykes said at a reception and artists’ talk on opening night this past Friday. “They actually had to make the choices of where they were going to hang, what they were going to hang, how they were going to present their works.”

t-shirts with art printed on them — How art is viewed can be as relevant as the work itself. Photo by Joe Phalon.

By making the decisions about how to display their work, the students were able to experience not just the creation of their projects, but the staging and presentation of it as well.

A display of ceramic work, for instance, is set up with a table and chairs to suggest how it might look in a home.

“We have people who are demonstrating their photography pieces on maps, demonstrating where those pieces were taken, the importance of place,” Sykes said.

Other photographs were transferred to t-shirts, with the manner in which they were placed on hangers and displayed creating a specific perspective for the viewer.

pottery artwork — These ceramics were staged to suggest how they would be experienced in a home environment. Photo by Joe Phalon.

“We asked the students to strongly consider, how can they bring more meaning to their work with the way they hang it?” Sykes said.

That freedom of choice also calls for an ability to make decisions and feel confident about those choices.

“I feel like we would hope at any school that artists would be able to have their opinions and be able to put them out there,” Sykes said. “It is nice that you know your kids feel that they can make art in a safe space where they know we encourage them to take risks and have something to say.”

The exhibit runs through May 24 in the Romano Gallery at Blair Academy in Blairstown. It’s open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Saturday.

Joe Phalon, Contributing Writer

Contributing Writer

Joe brings decades of journalism experience to the Ridge View Echo, covering everything from local school boards to the U.S. Supreme Court. A former National Law Journal editor and Columbia Law School press officer, he now enjoys telling community stories in Blairstown, where he lives with his wife, Rose, and their two dachshunds.