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Sounding Botany Bay

Coast Splash Zone Yenna Gap
A mosaic produced at Yenna Gap of the tannin-rich waters of the spalsh zone and bog.

February 8 – March 31, 2016

The inter-media exhibition Sounding Botany Bay presents documentary photographs, audio compositions, and videos of Botany Bay – one of Australia’s most significant cultural and natural sites – made by artist and 2006 Fullbright Senior Scholar, Timothy Nohe. The rich voices, sounds, and sights of the bay are blended into an aural and visual landscape that heightens and contrasts what is and has been, so that the visitor may experience the past and contemporary complexity of Botany Bay while reflecting on its future, and that of other shifting landscapes around the globe, near and far.


Audio

Clapping In Maria Nugent
Tangled Pipes
Oyster Depot

This 2009 image reflects a significant reimagining of the national park at Kurnell to view the site as the meeting place between two cultures, that of the indigenous people of the bay and the mission of Cook. Under the management of National Parks and Wildlife Service, historian Dr. Maria Nugent, and Aboriginal elders much design and interpretation work was done to balance the Aboriginal and European historical and cultural interpretation of the place. This is evidenced in the renaming of the park as Kamay Botany Bay National Park and transforming the longstanding Commemoration Day ceremony as the Meeting of Cultures ceremony. Over the course of the documentary, and continuing now Aboriginal people are integral to planning, stewardship and interpretation of this site with a fraught history.

Man from the La Perouse community holding an Eastern Fiddler Ray after a storm. Image made during the repatriation of aboriginal remains at a place of safe-keeping, Towra.

Public Program

4:00 p.m. Tuesday

February 16, 2016

Artist’s Talk​: Timothy Nohe

Timothy Nohe​ is an artist and educator engaging traditional and electronic media in daily life and public places. His artwork has been focused on sustainability and place, intermedia works, and sound scores for dance and video. Nohe was the recipient of a 2006 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission Fulbright Alumni InitiativeGrant in 2011. Four Maryland State Arts Council awards have supported his work in the area of music Composition, Non-Classical; Media; New Genre, and Installation/Sculpture. Nohe has also been recognized with a Creative Baltimore Award. In 2015 the Warnock Foundation recognized his interdisciplinary work in urban forests with a Social Innovator award. He is the founding director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) and a tenured professor of Visual Arts at UMBC. Nohe has strong ties to Australia, where he serves as an adjunct Professor at La Trobe University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; as an artist in Residence at the Centre for Creative Arts at La Trobe University, and on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Unlikely, based in Melbourne.


Installation Views


The presentation of this exhibition at UMBC is supported in part by an arts program grant fromthe Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the NationalEndowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from Friends of the Library & Gallery, theLibby Kuhn Endowment, the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA),the Dresher Center for the Humanities and individual contributors.Support for the ongoing artistic research project ​Sounding Botany Bay​ comes from theAustralian-American Fulbright Commission, and the University of Wollongong.

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They Fight With Cameras: Walter Rosenblum in World War II From D-Day to Dachau

group of young man in army dress holding cameras in a hill
They fight with cameras
Photograph by Walter Rosenblum
Normandy, France
June 27, 1944

So that all the world might have a photographic record of the invasion, these men, Signal Corps combat photographers, risk their lives on the front — their only weapons, a camera and a lot of nerve.

Collection of Rosenblum Photography Archive

August 26 – December 16, 2015

When the United States entered into World War II, it was with a sense of moral duty that many men entered the fight; Walter Rosenblum (1919-2006) was one of them. As a U.S. Army combat photographer Rosenblum landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, then traveled throughout Europe with various combat units. Documenting the war under extremely dangerous conditions, he secured the surrender of 75 German troops, was wounded in combat, and took some of the first motion picture footage of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Rosenblum was one of the most decorated WWII photographers, awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, five battle stars, the Purple Heart, and a Presidential Unit Citation.

Curated by Manuela Fugenzi, produced by Studio Zizola, Rome, and Daedalus Productions, Inc., New York.

Army medics evacuating a casualty
Photograph by Walter Rosenblum
St. Lo, France
July 20, 1944

Collection of Rosenblum Photography Archive
 
Omaha Beach rescue
Photograph by Walter Rosenblum
Normandy, France
June 7, 1944
 
Collection of Rosenblum Photography Archive
old id card, war photograph pass
War Photographers Press Pass of Walter Rosenblum
January 19, 1945

Collection of Rosenblum Photography Archive

Public Programs

12:00 noon
Film Screening
Walter Rosenblum: In Search of Pitt Street


6:00 p.m.
Talk
Nina Rosenblum

Film Producer, Daedalus Productions, Inc.


Installation Views

Categories

Abbott Miller: Design & Content

April 8 – June 30, 2015

The work of Abbott Miller merges graphic design and typography with spatial design, interactive media, and curatorial projects. Through design and art direction as well as writing and curating, Miller’s work embraces exhibitions, digital media, environmental graphics, textiles, identities and publication design. Trained as an artist and designer, Miller’s projects reflect his interests in art, performance, photography, fashion, architecture, and history. This exhibition is based on his recently published monograph “Abbott Miller: Design and Content” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014). The book argues that designers inhabit a critical space between form and content. Miller sees the role of the designer as a performer and interpreter, using words and images to dramatically stage content. He has collaborated with renowned artists, performers, and curators to create publications, digital media, and exhibitions that dramatically embody their content. He has also written extensively on design and the role of the designer as an author and editor, a figure who mediates and shapes narrative environments, whether in the space of a book or an exhibition.

Public Program

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Artist’s Talk: Abbott Miller


Abbott Miller is a partner in the New York City office of the international design studioPentagram. Since 2000 he has also maintained a satellite studio in Baltimore, where he also serves as a Visiting Artist in the MFA Graphic Design program at Maryland Institute College of Art. He is the author and editor of several books on design, including Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design, co-authored with Ellen Lupton. In 2014 Miller was awarded the AIGAMedal, his profession’s highest honor. His work has won numerous awards and is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Bibliotheques National de Paris.

Abbott Miller: Design & Content

Installation Views

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A Stirring Song Sung Heroic: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom, 1619 to 1865, Photographs by William Earle Williams

Fort Morgan, 2003

January 26 – March 25, 2015

The history of American slavery is considered in ​A Stirring Song Sung Heroic​, an exhibition of 80 black and white silver gelatin prints by photographer William Earle Williams. These images document mostly anonymous, unheralded, and uncelebrated places in the New World – from the Caribbean to North America – where Americans black and white determined the meaning of freedom. Archives of prints, newspapers, and other ephemera related to the struggle accompany the work. The presentation of this exhibition marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery nationwide following the conclusion of the American Civil War.

William Earle Williams is the Audrey and John L. Dusseau Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography at Haverford College. He received his M.F.A. degree from Yale University School of Art and holds a B.A. in history from Hamilton College. His photographs have been widely exhibited at diverse institutions including the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and UMBC. His work is held in many public collections including the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and UMBC’s Special Collections. Williams has also received numerous fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for 2003 – 2004.

Coffin House, 2001
Spencer Grave, 2006

Public Program

4:00 p.m. Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Artist’s Talk​: William Earle Williams

The lecture, co-sponsored by the Dresher Center the Humanities and the Library Gallery, will be presented as part of the Humanities Forum.


Categories

Victoria Sambunaris: Taxonomy of a Landscape

Victoria Sambunaris
Untitled (Uranium tailings, Mexican Hat, Utah), 2005
Chromogenic Print
Courtesy of the artist

August 27 – December 17, 2014

Victoria Sambunaris received her MFA from Yale University in 1999. Each year, she structures her life around a photographic journey crossing the American landscape. Her most recent project has been working in South Texas photographing the intersection of geology, industry, and culture encompassing the international boundary and energy industry. She is a recipient of the 2010 Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship and the 2010Anonymous Was a Woman Award. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of ModernArt, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of modern Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the Lannan Foundation. Radius Books published her first monograph in April 2014.

Victoria Sambunaris has traversed and documented the vast United States landscape for more than a decade, viewing the intersection of geology, industry, and culture, as both a record and a metaphor for the American experience.

In ​Taxonomy of a Landscape​, forty-one of the artist’s large-scale photographs reveal the mystery and unease of a country where human intervention and natural beauty inspire wonder in equal measure, while additional materials – video, books, maps, mineral specimens, journals, road logs, and photographic sketches – provide an intimate view of the artist’s life and work on the road.


Untitled (Potash Mine – distant view, Wendover, Utah), 2004
Chromogenic Print
Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend National Park, Texas), 2010
Chromogenic Print
Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Alaskan pipeline at Atigun Pass, Brooks Range, Alaska), 2003
Chromogenic Print
Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Distant steam vents, Yellowstone), 2008
Chromogenic Print
Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Red containers, wet ground, Fort Worth, Texas), 2000
Chromogenic Print
Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Warehouse with sand, El Paso, Texas), 2002
Chromogenic Print
Courtesy of the artist


Public Program

4:00 p.m. Wednesday

October 8, 2014

Artist’s Talk​: Victoria Sambunaris


Installation Views


The exhibition ​Victoria Sambunaris: Taxonomy of a Landscape​ originated at the Albright-KnoxArt Gallery in Buffalo, New York and was organized by Christie Mazuera Davis, ProgramDirector, Contemporary Art and Public Programs at the Lannan Foundation, and Albright-KnoxCurator for the Collection Holly E. Hughes. The Museum of Contemporary Photography atColumbia College Chicago’s presentation and subsequent tour of ​Victoria Sambunaris: Taxonomy of a Landscape​ has been generously supported by the Lannan Foundation, SantaFe, New Mexico.

The presentation of ​Victoria Sambunaris: Taxonomy of a Landscape​ at UMBC is supported in part by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Lannan Foundation, Friends of the Library & Gallery, the Libby Kuhn Endowment, and individual contributors.

Categories

Book of Lies

Melissa Smedley
Water…Or How The West Was Won, 2003
Three page book with accompanying letter, mixed media

 April 7 – May 31, 2014 

Eugenia P. Butler was a Los Angeles-based artist who played a formative but often overlooked role in Conceptual art where she regularly challenged people to explore how they perceive their “reality.” Butler’s Book of Lies project began in 1991 and examined how other artists use “the lie to explore our relationship with the truth.” Known for her collaborations and interactions with other artists, Butler held three artist dinners where she asked her guests to consider the questions, “What is the lie with which I am most complicit” and “What is the truth that most feeds my life?” 

Conceived of as a global conversation about truth and lies held through the medium of works of art and poetry, Butler invited artists to use the lie to explore our relationship with the truth. Book of Lies examines the lie as a human strategy using examples drawn from life situations including childhood, love, and war. Seventy-eight artists responded to these questions in unique and provocative ways, resulting in a body of work curated by Butler and Corazon del Sol titled Book of Lies

Book of Lies is curated by Corazon del Sol and circulated by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions, Pasadena, California. 

James Cobb
The Big Lie: The Spider and the Fly, 2003
Linocut
Benji Whalen
Rude Constellations, 2004
Hand-embroidered constellation drawing on denim
Jenny Watson
Untitled, 1997
Block print on felt
Steve DeGroodt,and Mary Rakow
Music like this finds all my wounds, 2003
Text collaged paper with gold fabric veil
Eugenia Butler and Corazon delSol
Where does the lie begin?, 2004
2 layer lithograph on handmade Japanese papers, gold threads
and tiny mirror. Envelope made from local topographic maps
Georganne Deen
Mother’s Lies, 1994
Color laserprint, text and collaged lotteria card


Public Program

6:00 pm Wednesday

April 16, 2014

Examining the Book of Lies: Truth, Lies and the Construction of Reality

Corazon del Sol, Artist and Curator

Reception to follow.

This event is free and open to the public.


Exhibition View

Categories

N. Jay Jaffee Photographs from Public to Personal, 1947-1997

Girl Learning to Skate, 1950
Livonia Avenue, East NY
N. Jay Jaffee
Gelatin Silver Print

January 27 – March 23, 2014

Seventy photographs–exquisite expositions of light and shadow, visual textures, and balanced tension–spanning the distinctive career of N. Jay Jaffee (1921-1999) are presented in this exhibition. From capturing the vibrancy of New York City streets to meditating on still landscapes, Jaffee’s photographs are very much a form of self-portrait, a means by which he interpreted both the world and his position in it. These thoughtful and subtly witty photographs are invitations to see, to question, and to engage fully with life.

Bryant Park, 1953
New York City
N. Jay Jaffee
Gelatin Silver Print
Looking at Seals, 1971
Aquarium, Coney Island, NY
N. Jay Jaffee
Gelatin Silver Print
Anti Vietnam Demo #1, 1974 (Printed 1977)
New York City
N. Jay Jaffee
Gelatin Silver Print
Boots, 1950
Queens, NYC
N. Jay Jaffee
Gelatin Silver Print
Detail: United Methodist Church, 1994
Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD
N. Jay Jaffee
Gelatin Silver Print
White Star Lunch, 1995
Fredrick, Maryland
N. Jay Jaffee
Gelatin Silver Print

Public Program

4:00 PM, Thursday

February 27, 2014

Reception to Follow

Christy Ford Chapin, Assistant Professor of History, will shed light on the historical context in which Jaffee was active as a photographer, with emphasis on the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the dramatic changes that occurred from the late 1940s through the 1990s. Tom Beck, Chief Curator of the Albin O. Kuhn Gallery, will discuss the life and work of photographer N. Jay Jaffee including: the influence of the Photo League the only arts group that was included on the United States Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations in 1947; Jaffee’s longtime muse—the streets of New York City; and the increasingly poetic and personal elements that characterize his later work.

This event is free and open to the public.


Categories

Druckworks: 40 Years of Books and Projects by Johanna Drucker

Johanna Drucker
From Now, 2007
Offset with letterpress covers, saddle stitched
Courtesy of the artist

September 16 – December 20, 2013

Artist, writer, typographic poet, and scholar-critic Johanna Drucker is widely known for her contributions to contemporary art theory and history, as well as her prolific output as a creative artist. Throughout her career she has helped shape the field of artists’ books, visual poetics, and digital aesthetics in dialogue with the arts and critical issues. Druckworks, a retrospective exhibition, is the first comprehensive presentation of Drucker’s books, graphic art and visual projects, and reveals key insights into the artist’s development over the course of four decades.

This exhibition is organized by the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago.

Johanna Drucker
Testament of Women, 2005-6
Letterpress with linoleum cuts
Courtesy of the artist
Johanna Drucker & Brad Freeman
Nova Reperta, 1999
Courtesy of the artist

Public Program

Artist’s Talk: Johanna Drucker

6:00 p.m. Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Reception to follow

Categories

Vista Sans Wood Type Project

September 16 – December 20, 2013

This exhibition presents 34 letterpress prints produced by a group of international artists as part of the Vista Sans Wood Type Project, an experimental type and print project that blends modern technology with a historic printing process to produce a hybrid form of typographic design.

The Vista Sans Wood Type Project was organized by Tricia Treacy and Ashley John Pigford.

Touch
Rose Gridneff & Alex Cooper
Letterpress print, 2012
17.5” x 27”
Hot Cut
Dafi Kuhne
Letterpress print, 2012
17.5” x 28.5”

Public Program

Artist’s Talk: Ashley John Pigford

6:00 p.m. Thursday, November 21

Ashley John Pigford is a practicing visual artist and graphic designer, and a professor of graphic and interaction design at the University of Delaware. Pigford’s work examines the relationships between technology, materials and experience. His cross-disciplinary and highly collaborative design/art work involves a wide range of media experiences including traditional print design, motion graphics, interactive installation, kinetic sculpture, digitally-augmented performance and letterpress printing.

Reception to follow

Categories

A New Context: Photographs from the Baltimore Sun Revisited

Miss Europe Congratulated by Runners-Up
Associated Press Wirephoto
Istanbul, Turkey, 1953

Eloisa Cianni, Miss Italy, is kissed by Marlene Dee, Miss England, after Cianni was chosen as Miss Europe. Sylviane Carpentier, Miss France, who shared second place with Miss Dee in the contest, is at left.

April 8 – May 31, 2013

News photographs are an integral part of newspapers. They equally illustrate, document, and interpret the news. Historically, newspaper editors and artists used hand-working on photographs to give emphasis, drama, and legibility to the primary events of the image. The alterations would mostly become invisible once the newspaper was printed. Seeing the original photographs showing the editing marks is a multilayered cultural and aesthetic experience, and reveals a new context in this exhibition featuring 90 news photographs from the 1920s to the 1970s selected from UMBC’s Baltimore Sun archive.

Fatal Accident
Clarence B. Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland, 1972

Two persons were killed and six hurt when this car crashed on Northern Parkway. 
Siamese Cats 
Richard Stacks
Baltimore, MAryland, 1965 

Siamese Cats of Mrs. Rita Bonaventura were among the 300 or so that competed for honors at the Civic Center in the third annual championship show of the Chesapeake Cat Club.
Marylanders In the U.S. Armed Forces in South Vietnam
South Vietnam, 1968

Specialist 4 George Johnson of Ellicott City is shown with his unit in South Vietnam.
John Eager Howard (Statue) 
Frank A. Miller
Baltimore, Maryland, 1949

John Eager Howard directing traffic on N. Charles St. at Mount Vernon Place.

Public Program

6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Symposium on Print Media, Photography & Art

William F. Zorzi The Wire, Writer, Editor, Actor; Baltimore Sun, Reporter, Retired

Jed Kirschbaum Baltimore Sun, Photographer, Retired

Tom Beck AOK Gallery, UMBC, Chief Curator

Christophe Corbett Department of English, UMBC, Professor


Exhibition Views

The presentation of A New Context: Photographs from the Baltimore Sun Revisited at UMBC is supported in part by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Friends of the Library & Gallery, the Libby Kuhn Endowment, and individual contributions.