Caroline Sacks and the impressionists in the chapter “Caroline Sacks” had different choices to select, different decisions and different results, but contrasting these two cases shows us that we should think twice before choosing an elite institution. The impressionists faced a dilemma of supporting the Salon and creating a new gallery; Caroline Sacks faced a dilemma of the Ivy League and non-Ivy League school.
The impressionists and Caroline faced two choices; one was the elite institution and another was non-elite institution. The impressionists had two choices about where to show their works. One hundred and fifty years ago, the Salon was everything to the artists. Everyone wanted to present his or her works in the Salon. The impressionists found it was too difficult to get accept by Salon, so did they want to be “Little Fish in the Big pond of the Salon or a Big Fish in the Little Pond of their own choosing?” Every night, the Impressions argued whether to keep trying to be accepted at the Salon or…show more content… The impressionists chose to create a new exhibition for themselves instead of the Salon. The Salon was a exhibition for all the greatest art in the 1860s; but compare the Salon, the impressionists had an entirely different idea about what constituted art, and they thought that “the acceptance by the Salon came with a cost: it required creating the kind of art that they did not find meaningful, and they risked being lost in the clutter of other artists’ work” (67). Similarly, Caroline chose Brown University which was a Ivy League. Brown University had huge attractive to her like it had “more resources, more academically able students, more prestige, and more accomplished faculty” (70) than the University of Maryland which was Caroline’s another choice. Finally, the impressionists chose non-elite institutions and Caroline chose elite
