We live between fences. We may hardly notice them, but they are dominant features in our lives and in our history. Built of hedge, concrete, wood and metal, the fence skirts our properties and is central to the American landscape. We use them to enclose our houses and neighborhoods. They are decorative structures that are as much part of the landscape as trees and flowers. Industry and agriculture without fences would be difficult to imagine. Private ownership of land would be an abstract concept.

But fences are more than functional objects. They are powerful symbols. The way we define ourselves as individuals and as a nation becomes concrete in how we build fences.

Through an examination of boundaries, place, and space, Between Fences will explore how neighbors and nations divide, protect, offend, and defend through the boundaries they build.

 

This exhibit runs from January 17, 2009 - March 1, 2009

Nadya Suleman, the California mother who gave birth to eight babies on January 26, now has a total of fourteen children under the age of 8, and she is only 33 years old. Since the birth of her octupulets made headlines across the globe, Suleman's life has come under the public microscope.

An ethical debate swirls around Suleman's decision to have eight more children. Suleman, almost universally referred to now as "Octo-Mom" is single and unemployed. Her mother, Angela, said her daughter's obsession with children "can't go on any longer."  She told the New York Daily News: "Instead of becoming a kindergarten teacher or something, she started having them, but not the normal way."

Suleman, who calls her childhood "dysfunctional," revealed in an interview with NBC's Ann Curry that she tried to get pregnant for seven years through artificial insemination and fertility drugs before she turned to in vitro fertilization. The octuplets, six boys and two girls born nine weeks premature, will remain in the hospital four weeks longer, the Los Angeles Times reported.