Gallery Reception: Home Reimaginings

May 28, 2024 5:00PM-6:30PM

The exhibition will be featured in the Patton-Malott Gallery from April 15th – May 28th, 2024.

Deborah Willis, Ph.D. is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She has affiliated appointments with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social & Cultural Analysis and the Institute of Fine Arts, where she teaches courses on Photography & Imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. She is the director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute of African American Affairs. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, the photographic history of Slavery and Emancipation, contemporary women photographers, and beauty.

She is the author of The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, among others. Dr. Willis’ curated exhibitions include: “Framing Moments in the” Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts, and “Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory” FotoFocus.

Dr. Willis was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and was a Richard D. Cohen Fellow in African and African American Art, Hutchins Center, Harvard University; a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and an Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. Fellow. She was the Robert Mapplethorpe Photographer in Residence of the American Academy in Rome and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a recipient of the Don Tyson Prize for the Advancement of American Art by the Crystal Bridges Museum in 2022; was named the Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence by the Norton Museum of Art.

Tara Bryan (b. 2002) is an emerging visual artist from New York. Using photography, installation and archives, her work addresses themes of identity, portraiture, and community. Drawing inspiration from her grandmother’s living room, Tara’s photographs often reflect the details of the spaces she grew up in. From the ornate curtains to the curated selection of family photos, this nostalgia influences her aesthetic, weaving a sense of history and tradition into her work. Tara holds a BFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Featured Artist:

Curaters

Dr. Deborah Willis

Deborah Willis, Ph.D, is a curator and a professor in the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University, Tisch. She received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the author of The Black Civil War Soldier, and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present.

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Tara Bryan

Tara Bryan (b. 2002) is an emerging visual artist from New York. Using photography, installation and archives, her work addresses themes of identity, portraiture, and community. Drawing inspiration from her grandmother’s living room, Tara’s photographs often reflect the details of the spaces she grew up in. From the ornate curtains to the curated selection of family photos, this nostalgia influences her aesthetic, weaving a sense of history and tradition into her work.Tara holds a BFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Learn More