J U L I E T T E  .  L A M O N T A G N E  .  ' 9 3

Empowering young women through art

When Juliette LaMontagne began teaching English at the High School of Art and Design in New York City in 1996, she discovered that by some demographic quirk, the public magnet school enrolled three times as many boys as girls. LaMontagne was troubled by how this disparity helped create a hostile environment for girls. Then one day she came upon one of her female students being attacked by a group of boys in a stairwell. After that incident, she says, “I just decided I had to do something.” So she started an after-school program that created a safe space for girls to gather and talk about sexual harassment, other personal experiences, and their frustration over not being heard. Calling their group Voices of Women, or VOW, the girls hit upon the idea of creating collaborative works of art that, in LaMontagne’s words, “talked back about the things that all of us in the group were experiencing.” The art, she says, provided a mechanism that enabled other people to be part of the conversation.

VOW’s first piece, called “Listen,” was a five-foot-long, three-dimensional wall sculpture that featured text about sexual harassment in anonymous, first-person narrative voices. Projecting out of the words were dramatic and lifelike hands pointing in accusation, making palm-outward gestures of “stop,” and forming tight fists. “Listen” was exhibited at the school gallery and later at the Ms. Foundation for Women.

 In “Listen” and subsequent collaborative art projects, VOW found a way to make the girls’ individual and collective voices heard. Moreover, VOW opened a dialogue that led to the school’s first-ever educational programs on sexual harassment. Alumna Marilyn Torres says that while VOW has contributed to institutional change at the school, its most profound impact continues to be felt by individual members. “It definitely made me stronger,” says Torres, a first-year student at Philadelphia University who is working toward a career in fashion design. “And with that strength I learned I could make my dreams come true.”

Working with other artists
As the group continued to grapple with how to represent its ongoing conversations visually, LaMontagne began bringing the girls to museums to see what other female artists were doing and inviting some of those artists to VOW’s after-school meetings. Says LaMontagne, “I think it’s very important to provide role models for the girls.” Artist Lynn Yamamoto felt such a strong connection to the group that she invited the girls to help with an installation project she was creating at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. In essence, LaMontagne says, Yamamoto became a participant in the group and the girls became collaborating artists.

As a result of that connection, the Whitney later invited VOW to do its own exhibit, which was completed with the help of another artist, Birgitta Lund. The girls created a room-sized, participatory floor installation called “Fathers.” Viewers walked along a floral pathway, crouching down to discover that the flowers themselves were made up of text that characterized the girls’ relationships with, and feelings toward, their fathers. Jeff Hopkins, the gallery coordinator of education programs at the Whitney, calls “Fathers” one of the museum’s most successful educational projects. VOW, he says, “produced a beautiful piece of artwork that also had content and a voice. It was of a quality that you don’t often see with people that age.”

Inspired to teach
Originally from Belmont, MA, LaMontagne was an English major at Trinity. Early on, her desire to effect positive change in society led to thoughts of a career in politics. Then a course taught by Professor Emeritus Charles B. “Bud” Schultz, “Radical Ideas in Education,” prompted the realization that education was a better way to create change. Says LaMontagne, “This class is what pushed me to get involved with educational reform. After taking this class and thinking through some of the proposals for reform in public education, I really felt inspired to get involved and to become a teacher.”

After graduating from Trinity, LaMontagne earned her master’s degree in education at Teacher’s College of Columbia University, then started her career as a New York state certified public school teacher. She was assigned to a couple of schools briefly before landing at the High School of Art and Design. Two years ago, Teacher’s College invited her back to be to be a full-time instructor and program coordinator, an honor and an offer she couldn’t refuse. Meanwhile, she also is completing her doctorate in a Columbia University program, for which, she points out, her Trinity course with Schultz is still relevant. “On my desk right now are my notebook and folder from that class,” she says. “I still refer to them all the time because the questions we raised in that class -- what reforms are effective and how are students empowered-- are ones that I’m still grappling with in my work.”

Though she is no longer teaching at the High School of Art and Design, LaMontagne continues to serve as the program director of VOW. She also has become the executive director of a fledgling nonprofit organization called the VOW Arts Institute for Young Women. The institute takes the original VOW as a model to be replicated at schools throughout the city, giving voice to young women through collaborative art projects that might include music or performance as well as visual art. Learning about the nonprofit world has been a challenge, LaMontagne says, and she is looking forward to finishing her dissertationÑwhich explores how community building and collaborative art lead to the empowerment of studentsÑnext year and devoting more energy to her new venture. 

LaMontagne has seen many girls transformed by their participation in VOW, and she feels well rewarded for her efforts. “Seeing these inequalities all the time in the school was making me crazy,” she says. “VOW was a way for me to keep my sanity, for me to do something proactive. I really feel like this project chose me, and it’s as helpful to me as it is to the girls.”

--Leslie Virostek