Press Release

Media inquiries:
Sharon Reed, Public Relations Coordinator
Hood Museum of Art, (603) 646-2426 • sharon.reed@dartmouth.edu
* Color slides and electronic images available upon request

Two Photographic Exhibitions Celebrate American Women as Artists and Historians

Hanover, NH—The Hood Museum of Art announces the opening of two special photographic exhibitions in January 2003—Ambassadors of Progress: American Women Photographers in Paris, 1900-1901 and Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project. Although conceived almost a century apart, these two shows are linked by their spotlight on women photographers and the connection of both exhibitions to renowned photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952).

Ambassadors of Progress: American Women Photographers in Paris, 1900-1901
January 4 through March 9, 2003

This exhibition investigates the central role of American women photographers within the international pictorialist movement. Ambassadors of Progress is a partial reconstruction of a historic exhibition organized by pioneering photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston for the Universial Exposition of 1900 in Paris. It features breathtaking landscapes, intimate portraits, scenes of everyday life, and still-lifes by twenty-nine notable artists, including Gertrude Käsebier, Amelia van Buren, and Zaida Ben-Yusef.

The exhibition in Paris more than a century ago demonstrated the key role American women photographers played in the development of photography, particularly the self-consciously artistic movement known as pictorialism. The accomplishments of these professional and amateur photographers clearly showed their mastery of the medium and made a strong impression on those in attendance. Each of the twenty-nine artists in the current exhibition is represented by a selection of breathtaking works, evocatively and delicately composed using a variety of photographic techniques, from the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection at the Library of Congress and the National Museum of American History.

The richly illustrated catalogue contains essays by Bronwyn Griffith, Assistant Curator at the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny; Verna Curtis, Curator of Photography, Library of Congress; Michel Poivert, President, Société Française de Photographie; and Andrew Robb, Senior Photograph Conservator, Library of Congress.

Ambassadors of Progress: American Women Photographers in Paris, 1900-1901 was organized by the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny in collaboration with the Library of Congress, which houses the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, recently conserved under a grant from the Terra Foundation for the Arts. Its presentation at the Hood Museum of Art is generously supported by the Leon C. 1927, Charles L. 1955, and Andrew J. 1984 Greenebaum Fund and the Bernard R. Siskind 1955 Fund.

Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project
January 18 through March 9, 2003

This exhibition features an installation by internationally renowned visual artist and contemporary photographer Carrie Mae Weems, along with a selection of photographs from Frances Benjamin Johnston's historic Hampton Album of 1900. The work of these two women, although distanced by time and race, is joined in their discipline and focus on the history and legacy of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University), founded with the mission to educate African Americans, and later, Native Americans.

Since the late 1970s, Ms. Weems has produced art that addresses the formal and political issues impacting African American culture and focuses upon the persuasive power of the visual image to identify and define perceptions of race, gender, and class. Her newest commission is a direct response to turn-of-the-century images of Hampton, as well as to the university today.

Ms. Weems has exhibited internationally in both solo and group shows, and has taught at major universities throughout the United States.

The historical portion of The Hampton Project features images by Frances Benjamin Johnston, a well-established photographer commissioned in 1899 to document the Hampton Institute for the Contemporary American Negro Life exhibition at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900. Johnston's photographs illustrate the progress Hampton had made since its inception, pursuing its mandate to assist the children of slaves and, after 1878, dispossessed Native Americans in becoming "proud and useful citizens." According to Vivian Patterson, Williams College Museum of Art Associate Curator and organizer of this exhibition, "The images are among the finest of Johnston's career and provide a historical perspective from which audiences may gain further insight into the Weems installation, as well as a vantage point on the one hundred years of difference between the two women's commissions."

Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project was organized by the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Peter Norton Family Foundation. Its presentation at the Hood Museum of Art is generously supported by the Ray Winfield Smith 1918 Fund and the Eleanor Smith Fund. An illustrated catalogue published by the Aperture Foundation, Inc., documents the project.