Pioneering Photographer: Frances Benjamin Johnston
It’s high time we celebrate the art of photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. She is considered by most art historians to have been the first “press photographer,” photographing fam ...
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Curator's Corner
Artist Birthday: William H. Jackson
Jackson took photographs of Shoshone Falls numerous times from every conceivable angle. Like the other photographers who were early chroniclers of the Western territories, Jackson's photographs emphas ...
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Curator's Corner
Documenting Child Labor: Jacob Riis
If we think that only adult women have played an important role in American history, then we are sadly mistaken. Before child labor laws were passed in the United States (1 September 1916), young wome ...
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Curator's Corner
Women's History Month: Lucretia Mott
The beginnings of the women’s rights movement in the United States occurred at the same time as early developments in photography in this country. To celebrate Women’s History Month, I pre ...
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Curator's Corner
Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Dean Brown
This year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day falls on the actual birthday of this great American leader. To mark the day, I will show you the work of photographer Dean Brown. The artist died way too young pu ...
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Curator's Corner
The Intangible in Japanese Photography
Traditional reverence for nature—a mainstay in most Japanese art forms throughout art history—continues in the work of contemporary Japanese artists. After a couple of beautifully foggy mo ...
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Curator's Corner
Art about Working People
The earliest ideas about a day to honor working Americans came about from labor unions in the 1880s. In fact, the idea of a national holiday is thought to have come from labor union officials in New Y ...
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Curator's Corner
Women's History Month: Lucy Ashjian
In the first half of the 1900s, there were numerous pioneering women documentary photographers who defined the genre. This was particularly true during the Great Depression (1929–1940), the seve ...
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Curator's Corner
Pride Month 2022: Robert Mapplethorpe
Part of a glittering gay culture of New York in the late 1970s and 1980s, Robert Mapplethorpe is most remembered for his photographs of male nudes. However, his body of work was not restricted to any ...
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Curator's Corner
Pride Month 2021 II: Berenice Abbott
By the time of the severe world economic downturn of the Great Depression (1929–1940) in America, many women artists were professional photographers and extremely successful in the field of ...
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