Playing With Potential
PLAYING WITH POTENTIAL:
An analytical exhibit of gendered toys
May - Sept 2006
The Brooklyn Heights Public Library
2nd Floor
280 Cadman Plaza West
Brooklyn, NY
Tel. 718-623-7100
Library Hours:
Monday, Wednesday & Friday 10-6
Tuesday 1-8
Thursday 1-6
Saturday 10-5
Parsons graduate student, Neeve Kelly, presents her debut exhibit, Playing with Potential, focusing on the relationship between gender and children’s toys at the Brooklyn Heights Public Library, mid-end May- September. Her provocative display is centered on the preparatory theory of toys: that playthings prime children for their futures by teaching valuable life-skills. Therefore, she considers that toys marketed towards males develop practical capacity; whereas toys marketed towards females propagate domestic proficiency. “Gendered toys appear to provide boys with experience that prepare them for their academic and professional futures, while providing girls with skills that prepare them for futures limited to the home; skills that are arguably used in our society to benefit males overall,” she explains.
Kelly supports her thesis through a display of ten toys, ranging from vintage classics to contemporary favorites, demonstrating that the cultivation of sexist skills through gendered toys is an issue that has permeated the second-half of the twentieth century through today. The exhibit includes such a wide-range of toys as the 1969 avocado-green Kenner Easy-Bake Oven, the 1960 Gilbert Beginner’s Erector Set, the Bratz fashion paper dolls and the original Nintendo Gameboy. The exhibit aims to elicit thought-provoking discussion and raise awareness of the pervasive gender of material culture.
“As our museum grows, it is important to explore contemporary thought, trends and directions for social development which affect everyone, including how parents select toys for their children. We are looking forward to public’s reaction to the questions about our society that her exhibit poses,” states Marlene Hochman, Executive Director and Founder of the Doll and Toy Museum of NYC.
Neeve Kelly is a graduate student and a fellow in the Master’s Program in the History of Decorative Arts and Design at Parsons: the New School for Design and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. She is a recipient of a certificate in Curatorial Studies from the New Bedford Whaling Museum. She graduated magna cum laude from Providence College with her Bachelor’s in Art History. Her senior undergraduate thesis, “Deconstructing Degenerate Art in the Third Reich: The Case of Camille Corot,” is published in the 2005 Providence College Art Journal, SYN.
