Past Exhibitions

Family Photos: Queer Representation in the Comer Collection

There’s power in the collective demand to be seen, to be dignified as human, especially in photographs, when lopsided histories can be righted, and new stories can rise from the ashes of erasure. Representing oneself through pictures, when agency and authority lie solely with the imagemaker, makes the demand to be seen an act of bravery—What if my likeness is rejected, or worse, denied?—and an act of refusal—I will not let anyone else determine my existence. I am who I show you I am. The  gift of visibility also extends to photographs, highlighting the intimate relationship between the photographer, the subject, and the viewer, too, who bears witness after the fact. And that’s what the photographs in Family Photos are: invitations.

Composed Perception:
Landscape as Aesthetic Process

The term “landscape” underscores the social uses and transformation of space into place through some level of human cultivation. This exhibit explores landscape as a cultural practice and as an aesthetic process, exploring not what landscape “is” or “means,” but what it does, how it works, and how the human being crucially shapes and is shaped by this cultivation.

Representation and Presentation in Photography

Curated by Francesca Brunetti, this exhibition reflects the way photography can be approached by using a theoretical framework based on the distinction between presentation and representation.