Light Work has announced its “50th Anniversary Exhibition: Selections from the Light Work Collection.” Through a partnership with the iconic Everson Museum of Art, this expansive golden-year retrospective will be on view in two of the museum’s main gallery spaces from Jan. 28 through May 14, 2023.
Credit: Dawoud Bey
Impressive in its breadth and depth, the exhibition is a thoughtful curation of images and objects that have entered Light Work’s collection since the organization’s inception in 1973. Only the generosity of former Light Work artists-in-residence, grant awardees and individual donations have made this possible.
Light Work’s 50th anniversary presents a unique opportunity to share with the local, regional and national community the legacy of support the organization has extended to emerging and under-represented artists working in photography, lens-based media and digital image-making.
More than 4,000 photographic prints, objects and ephemera from an extensive and diverse archive are the basis of this exhibition. The selection maps out the many programs and partnerships representing 50 years of our commitment to increasing the visibility of lens-based artists.
The exhibition also highlights the hundreds of artists who came to Syracuse to expand their practice and make new work. Highlights in the show include images from acclaimed photographers Dawoud Bey (residency 1985), Wendy Red Star (Ellis Gallery 2019), Alessandra Sanguinetti (residency 2002, Main Gallery 2003), Cindy Sherman (residency 1981), Hank Willis Thomas (residency 2006), Carrie Mae Weems (residency 1988), James Welling (residency 1986) and many more.
Deborah Willis
The five-month celebratory retrospective will boast a full roster of exhibition-related special events, workshops, docent-led tours, and an artist lecture with award-winning historian, author, curator, photographer and former Light Work residency participant (1990), Deborah Willis, Ph.D. Light Work will host Willis’ lecture in the Everson Museum’s Hosmer Auditorium on Thursday, April 13, at 6:30 p.m.
Willis is a University Professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She is also the director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture. Her body of work examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, contemporary women photographers, and beauty. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Her many landmark publications include “The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship” and “Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present.” Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include “Home: Reimagining Interiority” at YoungArts in Miami, “Framing Moments” at the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts, “Migrations and Meanings in Art,” and “Free As They Want to Be: Artists Committed to Memory” at FotoFocus 2022.
