Window to the Humanities

James Smillie (American, born in Scotland, 1807-1885), after Thomas Cole (American, born in England, 1801-1848): Voyage of Life: Youth, engraving and etching. Bequest of Marcellus Pope.

This exhibition highlights changes and continuities in the experiences of young people and the meaning of childhood in America. The sixteen prints and photographs raise the question of how children and youths have been valued – economically, emotionally, and morally – in different circumstances and regions, over the course of one hundred and fifty years. These objects express idealism and irony, adult worries about children and also admiration for them, interest in their learning and delight in their play, love and nurturance but also exploitation and neglect.

The exhibition grows out of an honors seminar devoted to this topic, History 49H: Childhood in America. As part of a group project to organize and interpret this exhibition, each of the sixteen students in this course studied a work in the Ackland collection and prepared a wall label and a four page commentary, available in the exhibition gallery notebook.

Professor John Kasson
Department of History
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill