Artists were captivated by the drastically changing industrial landscape of America during the Machine Age, the period from the early 1910s to the late 1940s. They represented factories, gas tanks, skyscrapers, and steel mills in a range of styles and techniques.
Known for his images featuring single words suspended in space, Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha (b. 1937) has experimented with a diverse range of media and styles throughout his career. Invited to work at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1969, as he began to gain notoriety for his Pop Art approach, Ruscha embraced lithography as a means to explore recurring themes from his paintings and screenprints.
From the bright lights of the bustling city to the still quiet of abandoned places, night has been a source of inspiration for artists across eras and styles. Artists such as Edward Hopper (1882–1967), Martin Lewis (1881–1962), and James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) were among those concerned with rendering night scenes, also called nocturnes, utilizing the versatile techniques offered by printmaking. This exhibition presents works that range in subject from the city to small-town life; from atmospheric effects to more abstract expressions.
Spanning photography’s history from 1840 to the present, this exhibition features highlights of the collection, including photographs from the museum’s archives and several recent acquisitions. Together, these works intimate the diversity and richness of America’s photographic traditions.
Marie Cosindas (b. 1925) did not intend to be a photographer. The eighth of ten children in a modestly situated Greek family living in Boston, she studied dressmaking in school and took up a career designing textiles and children’s shoes, also acting as a color coordinator for a company that made museum reproductions in stone. On the side, she created abstract paintings filled with atmospheric color.
Although many believe that large photographic prints are a recent phenomenon in photography, this exhibition reveals otherwise. In fact, the drive to create ever larger images has intrigued and motivated photographers from the medium’s earliest years. It was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century, however, that prints began to increase in size. Photographers like William Henry Jackson (1843–1942) used mammoth glass-plate negatives to capture images of the grand landscapes of the American West—a subject that called for large-scale depiction.
