Mythology of Childhood

The "Mythology of Childhood" exhibit addresses the complexity of the movement between the state of innocence and the fraught development of the child into an adult via adolescence. In this exhibit are artifacts that address both the nostalgia around the innocence, purity, and beauty of childhood and its inevitable necessary disruption. This theme is expressed, here, through the adolescent moment of coming of age, which can be perceived as  violence upon or corruption of the child as easily as it can be considered an awakening -- sexually, psychologically, and socially -- towards aduldhood. In these artifacts, and in much of Cormier's fiction, the rites de passage, while organized, aim toward nefarious ends  as oppored to those of many deep culture societies that support their budding adolescents toward full and productive adulthood.