This workshop aims to take stock of profound changes in the collecting, archiving and—most importantly—exhibition of photography. Prominent initiatives such as the Museum of Modern Art’s Object/Photo have explored ways in which photographs can be foregrounded as unique materials in display, rather than mere surfaces for images. Simultaneously, archives, galleries and museums have brought sustained attention to vernacular photographic forms, such as 19th-century studio portraits and 20th-century family snapshots. Exhibitions and initiatives based on this material have asked how vernacular photographs can be chosen and displayed in a critical and useful fashion. The event will gather a panel of curators, conservators, and scholars to take stock of these developments in photography’s display.
The event is free and open to the public. But please RSVP at developingroom@gmail.com
Sponsors
Center for Cultural Analysis
Art History Department, Rutgers University
Participants
Mitra Abbaspour
Mitra Abbaspour
Princeton University
Mitra Abbaspour is the Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Princeton University Art Museum. Previously, she was an Associate Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, where she held a leading role on a research initiative that drew together an international team of curators, conservators and historians to develop methods for an interdisciplinary study of the formation of photographic modernism in the twentieth century. The book Object:Photo Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection 1909 - 1949 and the digital humanities platform at www.MoMA.org/objectphoto are the results of this endeavor.
Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa, specifically the history of photography and its role in defining the cultural landscape in the twentieth century. She has authored essays for publications on contemporary artists, including: Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Lalla Essaydi, Hassan Hajjaj, Farhad Moshiri, and Shirin Neshat. Before arriving in New York, Mitra was Assistant Curator and Museum Writer at UCR/California Museum of Photography. She has organized numerous exhibitions and taught courses both in her specialization and, more generally on Islamic art, modern art, the history of photography and contemporary art at various universities, including: The Cooper Union, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and the University of California, Riverside.
Katherine A. Bussard
Katherine A. Bussard
Princeton University
Katherine A. Bussard is the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at the Princeton University Art Museum. Most recently, Bussard co-authored an award-winning publication exploring the intersection of photography, architecture, and urban studies. That book and the accompanying exhibition are entitled The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960–1980 (2014). She is also the co-author of Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman (2013) and author of So the Story Goes: Photographs by Tina Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Larry Sultan (2006). Her doctoral research on street photography at the City University of New York is the subject of Unfamiliar Streets: The Photographs of Richard Avedon, Charles Moore, Martha Rosler, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia (2014).
Lee Ann Daffner
Lee Ann Daffner
Museum of Modern Art
Lee Ann Daffner is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Conservator of Photographs at The Museum of Modern Art since 1998 and is responsible for the preservation, conservation and materials research for photographs in all the Museum collections. Daffner received a Master of Arts and Certificate of Advanced Study in the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Artifacts at Buffalo State, State University New York. She was on the leadership team for The Thomas Walther Collection Project, and co-edited the resultant publication and website, Object:Photo (2014). This project has become a model for interdisciplinary, materials-based research that advances the permanent record of scholarship on photography. Her other publications include studies of the materials and methods of Bill Brandt, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Josef Albers and Thomas Eakins. Currently she is investigating the work of August Sander and Russian photomontage.
Kaitlin Booher
Kaitlin Booher
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Kaitlin Booheris a PhD student in Art History at Rutgers University. She studies the history of photography with attention to its technical and aesthetic transformations, its social history, and its use as tool for communication at the turn of the 20th century. Her current research explores the intersection of aesthetics and economics in early 20th century fashion photography. Prior to Rutgers, Kaitlin was a curatorial consultant in the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art and assistant curator of photography and media arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Her exhibitions include Alex Prager: Face in the Crowd (2013) and Shooting Stars: Publicity Stills from Early Hollywood and Portraits by Andy Warhol (2012). She graduated with a BA in Art History from New York University in 2008.
Nicole R. Fleetwood
Nicole R. Fleetwood
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Nicole R. Fleetwood is a cultural theorist and writer interested in visual culture, black cultural history, gender and feminist studies, performance, creative nonfiction, and poverty studies. She is the author of two books: Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness, which was the recipient of the 2012 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize of the American Studies Association, and On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination (Rutgers University Press, 2015). Her articles appear in African American Review, American Quarterly, Aperture, Callaloo: Art and Culture in the African Diaspora, Public Culture, Signs, Social Text, tdr: the journal of performance studies, art catalogues, and edited anthologies.
Fleetwood is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture, and the Whiting Foundation. She is completing her third book, Marking Time: Prison Art and Public Culture, a study of visual art in the era of mass incarceration. She has collaborated with Aperture Foundation on Prison Nation—an exhibition of prison photography, a special issue of the magazine, and a six-part public engagement series. In 2014, she co-organized “Marking Time: Prison Art and Activism,” a conference and exhibition with the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers.
Donna Gustafson
Donna Gustafson
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Donna Gustafson is the Curator of American Art and the Mellon Director for Academic Programs at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University and a member of the graduate faculty in Art History. Her publications and exhibition projects at the Zimmerli include Subjective Objective: A Century of Social Photography(2017); Jessie Krimes: Apokaluptein: 16389067(2014); Rachel Perry Welty 24/7 (2012); at/around/beyond: Fluxus at Rutgers (2011);Water (2010)and Lalla Essaydi: Les femmes du Maroc (2010). She is coauthor with Andrés Mario Zervigón of Subjective Objective: A Century of Social Photography (Hirmer, 2017), and the author of George Segal in Black and White: Photographs by Donald Lokuta (Zimmerli, 2015), Amelia and the Animals: The Photographs of Robin Schwartz (Aperture, 2014), Almost Human: Dolls and Robots in Contemporary Art (Hunterdon Art Museum, 2005), and Images from the World Between: The Circus in Twentieth-Century American Art (MIT Press, 2001). She has published reviews and articles, presented papers, and participated in symposia and panels on a variety of topics in photography, American, and contemporary art. She has a Ph.D. in Art History from Rutgers University.