Curator Katherine Gass Stowe will give a free guided tour of “Sequences: Ode to Minor White,” on Thursday, August 19, at 7:30 p.m. at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC). The tour will take place in person at the Museum and will be simultaneously livestreamed via Zoom and Facebook. To attend online, register at brattleboromuseum.org. Registration is not required for those planning to attend in person.
“Sequences: Ode to Minor White” is a group exhibition of contemporary works of art that are in some way evocative of the influential work of American photographer, writer, and educator Minor White (1908–1976).
“I’ve always loved Minor White,” Gass Stowe said. “Years ago, I started to see in contemporary artwork shades of the philosophies that White worked so hard to capture in his photography and in his writing.”
The artists featured in the exhibit include Andrea Belag, William Eric Brown, Niqui Carter, and Kevin Larmon, along with a selection of vintage photographs by Minor White on loan from the Bank of America Art Collection and a concurrent off-site outdoor art installation by Jessica Judith Beckwith.
Born in Minneapolis, White studied with the celebrated art historian and critic Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University. While working as a staff photographer at the Museum of Modern Art, White was inspired by Nancy Newhall’s 1946 exhibition of work by Edward Weston. He began juxtaposing his own images in highly structured groupings that he would refer to as “Sequences.”
“Through ‘Sequences,’ White explored relationships of form while seeking to access the philosophical and spiritual elements inherent in those relationships,” Gass Stowe said. “White was interested in how photography could be used to capture a special interplay of light and form that could signify something much deeper.”
White was co-founder and editor of the photography magazine Aperture. He was influenced by Group f/64, which included Stieglitz, Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and others. In the late 1940s, he taught at the California School of Fine Arts, where he befriended Weston and Ansel Adams. He went on to teach at the Rochester Institute of Technology, during which time he made some of his most enduring and famous images. Several of these are included in the BMAC exhibit.
Gass Stowe is the founder and chief curator of James Company Contemporary Art Projects. She is the contracted curator for Bank of America in the New York metropolitan region and has held posts at The Whitney Museum and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. She received her M.A. in the History of American Art Advocacy from The Gallatin School, New York University.
BMAC will present two other events in connection with “Sequences”: an in-person photography workshop with Jade Doskow, in which participants will create photographs inspired by the vision of Minor White (Aug. 28) and an online talk about Minor White by Catherine Barth, Ph.D. (Sept. 30).
Founded in 1972, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center presents rotating exhibits of contemporary art, complemented by lectures, artist talks, film screenings, and other public programs. BMAC is open Wednesday-Sunday, 10-4. Admission is on a “pay-as-you-wish” basis. Located in historic Union Station in downtown Brattleboro, at the intersection of Main Street and Routes 119 and 142, the Museum is wheelchair accessible. For more information, call 802-257-0124 or visit brattleboromuseum.org.
BMAC is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Allen Bros. Oil, Brattleboro Savings & Loan, C&S Wholesale Grocers, the Four Columns Inn, Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters, and Whetstone Station Restaurant & Brewery.
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