CONTACT: Diane Pineiro-Zucker, 845-437-7404, [email protected]
EDITORS: Photographs are available upon request
URLs: http://vassun.vassar.edu/~fllac/
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- Vassar College's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center will survey the history of women photographers with the opening of "Camera Women: An Exhibition in Tribute to Linda Nochlin," on Friday, January 25. "Camera Women," which portrays the changing role of women in photography since 1839, runs through Monday, March 4.
A public opening and reception for "Camera Women" will be held on Thursday, January 24, from 5:30 to 8:00. Exhibition curator Carol Armstrong will speak in Taylor Hall, room 203, at 5:30 p.m. on the day of the opening. A reception will follow in the museum.
Along with a review of photographic aesthetics from 1839 to the present day, "Camera Women" surveys art by women in the modern era. As such, it offers a critical reassessment of the issues that were raised 30 years ago in the pivotal essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" by art historian Linda Nochlin. Nochlin graduated from Vassar in 1951. The wide-ranging exhibition examines the achievements of "camera women" among, apart from, and alongside cameramen in four historical phases: at the time of art photography's first fluorescence (1850s-70s), during the Photo-Secession movement (1903-1917), in the modernist decades of the 1920s to 1960s, and from the 1970s to the present.
Drawn in large part from the collection of the Art Museum at Princeton University, "Camera Women" is supplemented by works from the collections of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and of Alexandra Marshall, a supporter of the museum. The exhibition was organized by The Art Museum, Princeton University. Some of the best known artists in the exhibition are Julia Margaret Cameron, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Gertrude Kasebier, Lucia Moholy, Dora Maar, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, Cindy Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, and Francesca Woodman.
"Camera Women" has special significance at Vassar, where it pays tribute to the life's work of alumna and former faculty member Linda Nochlin. Following her graduation in 1951 with a BA in philosophy, Nochlin earned a master's degree in English from Columbia University and a doctorate in art history from New York University. Joining Vassar's faculty in 1963, Nochlin taught at the college until 1979. Having taught at City University in New York through the 1980s, and at Yale University from 1989 to 1992, she is currently the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. Besides numerous critical collections of essays, Nochlin's major published works include "Realism" (Penguin, 1971)," Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays" (Harper and Row, 1988), and "The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as Metaphor of Modernity" (Thames and Hudson,1994).
The illustrated catalogue for "Camera Women" features an essay by exhibition curator Carol M. Armstrong, the Doris Stevens Professor of Women's Studies and professor of art and archaeology at Princeton University. The exhibition is made possible at Vassar by the generous support of the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center will open docent-led tours on Saturdays and Sundays from Saturday, February 2, through Sunday, March 3. Museum visitors may choose tours of the exhibition or the permanent collection. Saturday morning tours are geared toward families, and will begin at 11 a.m. Adult-oriented tours will begin at 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tours are free and open to the public. Reservations are not required.
Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free. The Loeb is open to the public Tuesdays through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays, from 1 to 5 p.m. The Center is wheelchair accessible. For more information, call (845) 437-5632 or visit http://vassun.vassar.edu/~fllac/.
Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.
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