13 May 2024.
Last week, we hosted our first ever event — a gallery tour and discussion at the Ashmolean Museum. Dr Jim Harris, the Ashmolean’s teaching curator, led us through select galleries of the museum, inviting us to consider a topic that is of keen interest to the Oxford Exemplars Network (OEN): the concept of ‘the admirable’.
In role modelling contexts, the feeling of admiration — or the perception that someone is admirable — characteristically results in imitation of the admired person. Of course, other responses are possible: for instance, envy and resentment of a person’s admirable features.
This complex human phenomenon can be explored in many contexts. At the Ashmolean, we focussed upon ‘the admirable’ in relation to human and divine persons. Perhaps some figures we encountered — a seated Buddha, for instance — were meant to be admired and imitated in particular ways. Perhaps others — Saint Jerome in the desert — escaped our admiration due to their distance from our everyday lives.
The range of possible responses to exemplars highlights an important feature of role modelling: its subjectivity. Exemplars, we might say, ‘belong’ to each of us — to me (I have my own exemplars) and to you (you have yours). And the onus is on us, as responsible agents, to reflect on our admiration. What is about this person that I admire? What should I do in response to this feeling? What might we do to learn from each other and our exemplars?
These are important moral questions, the sort that should be raised when we encounter (possible) exemplars. Twisting through the Ashmolean’s collections, we flexed important moral muscles. Sometimes, without noticing. But always moved forward by the beauty that surrounded us.
OEN is grateful to the Ashmolean Museum and especially to Dr Jim Harris for facilitating this event. We encourage everyone — no matter where you are in the world — to explore the Ashmolean’s online collection and to reflect upon ‘the admirable’ works you encounter. Search the collection through the image below.
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