What Does It Take to Put on an Art Show? Teen Gallerists Tell All

Sasha Frolova is arranging nine color photographs in an unfinished space overlooking the Bowery, the famed New York art hub once favored by the likes of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat and now home to the boundary-pushing New Museum. At first glance, all of the photos in Sasha's series, titled "Bikini Lines," look the same, but step a little closer and you see that each perfectly centered figure in a swimsuit is a different subject—girls of various shapes, sizes, and yes, bikini line states.

"It was orientation week at Cornell," the 19-year-old says of her inspiration, "and the girls had such a different attitude at night than they did during the day. They were so self-conscious, and the way they were defining and presenting themselves to the world was so much about going to these frat parties." So the New York native (who has since transferred to NYU) invited fellow freshmen to pose for her in front of the school's pool. One of the subjects is Sasha herself: "When you're doing this kind of thing and putting people in an uncomfortable position, if you also do it yourself, you're included in the cause."

The series is just one of 40 pieces that are part of "Green Light," Teen Art Gallery's latest show. TAG, as it's affectionately called by its members, was founded three years ago by 17-year-old high school senior Audrey Banks. It isn't a physical gallery, but rather a group of teens that mount semi-annual art shows featuring the work of their peers. A steering committee of 10 high schoolers—currently led by director Charlotte Bravin Lee—put out worldwide calls for submissions on Facebook (this year they received 800) and select and curate each show themselves.

Sasha calls Charlotte "Queen TAG," and today she looks every bit the head-art-chick-in-charge in camo shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with a Roy Lichtenstein print. "TAG's this moment of artistic freedom before we're changed by adult instruction," Charlotte explains. "Right now there are no boundaries. There's no one telling us what to do. In the future, we won't have the freedom to just make and show art—it doesn't exist." Whether or not that ends up being the case, she'll find out soon enough; this is the last TAG show the 18-year-old will curate before heading to Kenyon in the fall, and the first one where she's displaying her own work.

Cliff Tang, a junior who's taking over director duties with Kristjan Tomasson next year, credits TAG with clearing up misconceptions. "When you think of youth and art, you think of the pretentious person walking through a gallery being like, 'Oh, I want to buy this, I want to buy that,' or this grungy teen who hates everything and everybody," he says, joking that he half-expected Charlotte to be of the angsty artist variety. "I was frustrated because I couldn't identify with either of these things. TAG gave me the opportunity to show young people that art can be anything you want it to be—it's not these stereotypes."