Fourth Grade Project
Bridging cultural differences by building a global student community
On View June 25, 2022 to December 11, 2022
Inside the Exhibition
This exhibition captures fourth graders at a turning point when their worldviews are beginning to take shape. They are thinking critically, developing deep relationships, and are interested in learning about and helping others. Artist Judy Gelles has harnessed that interest to bring disparate cultures together in the same room.
The exhibition features 65 portraits of fourth grade students from 10 countries and a wide range of economic and cultural backgrounds. Gelles asked the students three questions. Who do you live with? What do you wish for? What do you worry about? Told in their own words, 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.
Interactive photo stations throughout the exhibit allow visitors to answer the same questions Gelles posed to the students.
This exhibit is bilingual in English and Spanish.
Judy Gelles (1944–2020) was a multimedia artist who explored the interplay between art, sociology, and psychology using image and text. Gelles received her MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and her Masters in Counseling from the University of Miami. She has had a long-time focus on themes of family and children, with work in major collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Judy Gelles began what would become the Fourth Grade Project in 2008 in a Philadelphia school where she was a volunteer. The school principal said the kids could only be photographed with their backs to the camera, to protect their identities as minors. In that moment, Gelles visualized the faceless stance and conceived what would become The Fourth Grade Project. She asked class members to pose on the same assigned spot on school grounds to emphasize their common status and to provide a background for the graphic text she created from their answers.
Gelles then spent a decade interviewing and photographing 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.
The combination of frontal and reverse portraits allowed for the development of both personal and universal stories, and derived from the subject's 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.
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Fourth Grade Project educator guide: This ExhibitsUSA programming guide provides related educational resources and program/activity ideas suitable for the classroom or at home.
The Fourth Grade Project connects viewers locally and globally, bridging cultural differences by fostering a strong, tolerant, and global student community. The project helps to decrease isolation and prejudice while asserting that every person’s story matters.
The Fourth Grade Project is a program of ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance with Texas Commission on the Arts and The National Endowment for the Arts.
The Bullock Museum, a division of the Texas State Preservation Board, is funded by Museum members, donors, and patrons, the Texas State History Museum Foundation, and the State of Texas.
Media Contact
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Press Releases
The Fourth Grade Project opens at the Bullock Museum on Saturday, June 25
June 22, 2022 (Austin, Texas) -- The Fourth Grade Project, an exhibition highlighting the work of acclaimed visual artist Judy Gelles, opens at the Bullock Texas State History Museum on Saturday, June 25, 2022. The photography exhibition features images and personal stories of school children across the globe. View Press Release