Ursula Schulz-Dornburg: Memoryscapes
Memoryscapes is a solo exhibition by the German artist Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, realised in collaboration with Lucy Rogers.
Paul Jaray: The Rationality of the Streamline
This exhibition was centered on the seminal but little-known visionary engineer Paul Jaray, who designed the first truly aerodynamic automobiles in the 1920s but was ignored (and later written out of history) by the German Nazi government because he was Jewish. The exhibition includes artworks based on aerodynamic automobiles, among these the "Cadillac Ranch" public sculpture by Ant Farm. Blaise Tobia’s series of photographs of Cadillac Ranch (made in 1974 just after completion of the work) was featured. An earlier version of the exhibition took place at the Arsenale Institute for Art and Politics in Venice, in 2022.
Elisabeth Smolarz: Mélloncene
The exhibition Mélloncene serves as a symbolic reminder of our disconnection from the natural world, and the underlying grief stemming from the ongoing daily loss of hundreds of species who coexist with us on this planet. In her most recent body of work consisting of photographs and videos, Seeing a Tiger Didn't Change Who I Am, Elisabeth Smolarz grapples with the current age of mass extinction. In an effort to address the dire situation faced by the most endangered species, she inserts instructions on how to prevent their extinction into the source codes of public domain images. The resulting photographs and videos appear fragmented, evoking the sense of artifacts unearthed by future archaeologists many centuries from now.
Cities in Flux
Criss-crossing the globe from Chicago to Tokyo, via Prague and Mumbai, with a stop-over in Toronto, Cities in Flux is a wide-ranging exploration of the city told through a selection of 100 photographs from the AGO Collection. Highlighting various economic, political and cultural realities underpinning the urban experience, the exhibition showcases photographs, post cards and albums – many on view for first time - made since 1850. Berenice Abbott, Bhupendra Karia, Paul Kodjo, Diane Liverpool, Danny Lyon and Gillian Wearing are among the more than 45 artists included in the exhibition. Curated by Marina Dumont-Gauthier, AGO Curatorial Fellow, Photography, Cities in Flux invites us to consider cities and the role of images in their growth and evolution.
Ellen Carey: Struck by Light
Struck by Light represents the largest survey of Ellen Carey’s experimental photo-objects and lens-based art opening at the New Britain Musuem of American Art (NBMAA) showcasing iconic works spanning decades of her career (1991-2022), all from NBMAA collection as well as the artist’s own. In Lacock, England, home of photography, The Fox Talbot Museum, Light Struck features a solo exhibition by Ellen Carey (May 2023-March 2024); it complements the New Britain Museum of American Art. Collectively, the works trace Carey’s enormous contributions to the field of photography through her ongoing and ever-innovative experiments in light and color, dings and shadows, dark/negative versus white/positive.
Light Struck: Ellen Carey
Ellen Carey’s Light Struck takes the viewer through two centuries of photographic play and discovery. Showcasing key pieces from her career, the exhibition also features a completely new artwork (2023) created in response to one of Talbot’s 19th-century photograms titled: Crush & Pull with Hands, Penlights & Spruce Needles. Many of the artworks in Light Struck are from the artist’s collection on exhibit for the first time in England.
J. P. Ball and Robert S. Duncanson: An African American Artistic Collaboration
This installation highlights the collaboration between two free, Black artists working in Cincinnati, Ohio, during the antebellum period—photographer James Presley (J. P.) Ball and landscape painter Robert Seldon Duncanson. It features three paintings from SAAM’s collection by Duncanson alongside nine works by Ball. Eight of the photographic works were recently acquired by the museum from the L. J. West Collection and the Dr. Robert L. Drapkin Collection and are on view in SAAM’s galleries for the first time.
Defiant Visions
Defiant Visions showcases women photographers’ resistance to the apartheid regime through the lenses of their cameras. During decades of oppression, these women took photographs to expose not only racist but also gender-discriminatory social, economic and political structures. This exhibition explores the work of practitioners employing black and white imagery to focus on the women surrounding them.
Reality Makes Them Dream: American Photography, 1929–1941.
In the fall of 1930, Stanford biology professor Laurence Bass-Becking used a curious phrase to describe the photography of his friend Edward Weston: “Reality makes him dream.” Few people today would associate dreaminess with the Great Depression, yet Bass-Becking penned this statement one year into the economic turmoil that would last until the nation’s entry into World War II.
In Dialogue: Portraiture
In Dialogue is a series of temporary installations in the Museum’s collection galleries. Inspired by points of visual symmetry between works, this presentation places contemporary portraits by international photographers in conversation with European paintings and sculpture created before 1900. Through compelling and sometimes unexpected juxtapositions, these installations invite visitors to explore diverse approaches to portraiture and see both historical and contemporary works anew.