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Art museum presents exhibit on Fortune magazine project
When: Sunday through July 17
Hours: 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday.
Admission: $3 suggested donation for adults; children under 12 admitted free.
Free preview reception: 6-8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Westmoreland Museum of American Art, 221 N. Main St. Greensburg
Details: 724-837-1500 or www.wmuseumaa.org
In 1936, photographer Walker Evans and writer James Agee set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to document the daily lives of tenant farm families in the Deep South. They spent three weeks in Hale County, Ala., living with and recording the routines of three sharecropper families. The words and images they produced became the celebrated book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," published in 1941. For the 1960 republication, Evans re-edited his picture section, doubling the number of plates from 31 to 62. Exploring differences between the two editions, the exhibition sheds new light on Evans's changing perception of his work through his own editorial and philosophical revision. It takes a new and in-depth look at Evans' photographs and Agee's writings.
In conjunction with the latest exhibit, WMAA also will host "Charlee Brodsky: A Town Without Steel, Envisioning Homestead." This exhibition of new work by Brodsky explores Homestead, one of the most distinctive and ethnically diverse working class communities in the Pittsburgh region. Homestead has a rich labor history and has been transformed recently from a dying steel town to a place that now hosts an enormous shopping complex, which has been set down on the land that once was the home of the famous steel mill that Andrew Carnegie bought from Henry Clay Frick in 1883. Her photographs attempt to capture and understand the relationship between the old and the new Homestead, the old and the new America.
Related programs
The WMAA will offer the following programs related to both exhibitions:
- Thursday Evening Lecture, 7 p.m. May 12. Photographer Charlee Brodsky will discuss her current exhibition A Town Without Steel. In this lecture and slide presentation, Brodsky will explore the transformation of the old and new Homestead through the lens of her camera. She also will discuss her collaboration with writers Jim Daniels and Jane McCafferty.
- Thursday Evening Lecture, 7 p.m. June 16. Gallery Talk will allow visitors to walk through the exhibition "Walker Evans and James Agee: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" with WMAA Curator Barbara Jones. Learn more about the Fortune magazine project that brought the artist and writer together in 1936 on assignment to document the daily lives of tenant farm families in the Deep South.
- Thursday Evening Lecture, 7 p.m. June 23. Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University, and leading authority on 19th- and 20th-century American cultural history will place Evans' version of the South alongside other important ideas and images of that unique region of the United States.
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