Charles Moore (American, 1931–2010),Martin Luther King Jr. Arrested,Montgomery, Alabama, 1958, gelatin silver print,High Museum of Art, Atlanta,purchase with funds from Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection,1994.63.© Estate of the artist.

High Museum of Art | A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, September 15, 2023 - January 14, 2024

This fall, the High Museum of Art will present the first major survey of Southern photography in over 25 years, “A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845” (Sept. 15, 2023-Jan. 14, 2024). The exhibition will reveal the South’s critical impact on the evolution of American photography and examine the region’s complex history through more than 170 historical and contemporary works, drawn extensively from the Museum’s collection. Following its debut at the High, “A Long Arc” will travel to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover (February-July 2024) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (September 2024-January 2025).

“A Long Arc” will explore the history of Southern photography by theme and time period, beginning with a section devoted to the Antebellum South and the Civil War, when photographers including Alexander Gardner and George Barnard transformed the practice of the medium across the nation and established visual codes for articulating American identity and expressing collective trauma. The section will include key works from the Julia J. Norrell Collection of 19th-Century American Photography, which the High acquired in 2021 and will be on view at the Museum for the first time. These include prints of extraordinary rarity and power that speak to the issues that divided the country in the 1850s and 1860s, including slavery, race and citizenship

For more information visit High Museum of Art

William Walling, Jr., [Portrait of Marlene Dietrich], 1932. Collection Pierre Passebon.

International Contemporary Photography | Play the Part: Marlene Dietrich, September 29, 2023–January 8, 2024

Play the Part: Marlene Dietrich, on view at the International Center of Photography (ICP) from September 30, 2023, to January 8, 2024, examines the multifaceted evolution of Dietrich’s public persona with nearly 200 photographs made between 1905 and 1978. The exhibition provides a window into Dietrich’s complex and intrepid life as well as the rapid transformations in the entertainment industry – from silent film to television – in which she thrived, cementing a legacy as one of the 20th century’s most dynamic and iconic artists.

On view for the first time in the United States, these extraordinary photographs from the collection of Pierre Passebon offer a glimpse into Dietrich’s mastery of her own image in the era of studio-dominated movie making and distribution in Hollywood—a system which dissolved in the 1960s, drastically shifting the centers of power in the industry. Among the images found in Play the Part are studio-commissioned publicity portraits, identifiable by the appearance of Dietrich's autograph, often in her distinctive green ink. This exhibition showcases over 80 of these captivating works by Hollywood photographers such as George Hurrell, Eugene Robert Richee, and William Walling Jr., alongside iconic photographs by renowned artists including Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Alfred Eisenstadt, Horst P. Horst, Lee Miller, Irving Penn, and Edward Steichen. The exhibition also highlights film stills, set pictures, and other candid photographs, many of which are unpublished and rarely seen.

For more information visit ICP

Yasumasa Morimura 森村泰昌 (born 1951 Osaka, Japan; active Japan), Van Eyck in a Red Turban, from the series Self Portraits through Art History, 2016–18. Chromogenic print on transparent medium; 25.7 × 18.4 cm, 33 × 24.8 cm (frame). Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York (L.2023.18.1)

Princeton University Art Museum | Art about Art: Contemporary Photographers Look at Old Master Paintings, August 19 through November 5

A new exhibition, Art about Art: Contemporary Photographers Look at Old Master Paintings, invites viewers to discover new connections between iconic artworks in the European canon and art being created today. Open August 19 through November 5 at the Princeton University Art Museum’s Art on Hulfish gallery, the exhibition features thirteen contemporary artists interrogating the history and function of artistic influences and genres across chronology, geography, and medium.

“This exhibition reveals how vital the art of the past remains to many artists working today,” said Baer. “The selection will encourage viewers to consider how contemporary photographers respond in various ways to famous compositions, seek to explore emotions as expressed in historical paintings, address issues of identity that were as pressing then as now, and apply new technologies in surprising ways.”

The exhibition includes significant works from well-known contemporary artists, including Vik Muniz, whose Double Mona Lisa, rendered in peanut butter and jelly, is inspired by both the original by Leonardo da Vinci and Andy Warhol’s prints from the 1960s; Bill Viola, whose video work, The Quintet of the Silent, is inspired by the passions of the onlookers in scenes of Christ’s Mocking as depicted by Hieronymus Bosch and his followers; and Ori Gersht, who shatters floral arrangements inspired by Old Master painters and captures the split-second explosions. Also on view is a diptych from Nina Katchadourian’s series Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style, in which she presents herself as both the man and woman of a fifteenth-century Flemish couple, evoking their poses and using bath tissue to mimic their costumes.

For more information visit Princeton University Art Museum