Explore the Vaults: Abstraction and the American Scene

List Projects 34: Brittany Nelson presents a body of work that drifts between scientific inquiry and emotional projection, where technology becomes a vessel for longing and imagination. Nelson’s practice is rooted in photography, yet it consistently expands beyond the image, drawing from archives, literature, and cinematic language to probe how humans search for connection—both with one another and with the unknown. Working with reimagined analog processes such as mordançage, bromoil, and tintype, Nelson treats photographic materials as unstable ground rather than fixed records. These techniques introduce erosion, residue, and chance, mirroring the imperfect ways memory and desire surface over time. Her interest in space exploration functions less as a celebration of technological triumph than as a metaphor for projection: the impulse to send signals outward in the hope of recognition, affirmation, or response. The exhibition’s new photographs and moving-image work, filmed at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, place viewers inside a landscape where scientific rigor coexists with emotional vulnerability. Home to one of the world’s largest radio telescopes and a center for SETI research, the observatory becomes, in Nelson’s hands, a charged psychological site. The telescope looms not only as an instrument scanning the cosmos, but as an object onto which expectations, obsessions, and disappointments are quietly mapped. Nelson’s video work draws inspiration from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, weaving themes of absence, fixation, and idealization into its structure. Sound plays a crucial role: the persistent hum of liquid-helium pumps pulses like a mechanical heartbeat, grounding the work in bodily sensation. Visually, the piece shifts between restrained 35mm imagery and increasingly restless handheld movement, building tension through repetition and rupture. The telescope itself becomes a stand-in for a lost relationship, turning the scientific pursuit of contact into an intimate narrative of attachment and release. In List Projects 34, Brittany Nelson reframes the search for extraterrestrial intelligence as a reflection of human interiority. The exhibition suggests that looking outward—to space, to archives, to machines—is often a way of confronting the limits of perception, and of reckoning with the desires we project onto the vast, silent unknown. Image: Brittany Nelson, Green Bank Telescope, 2025. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy the artist and PATRON Gallery © Brittany Nelson

Belonging in Transit is a photography exhibition by Carlos Muñoz that examines the intimate realities of migration through a deeply personal lens. Centered on Redland, a vibrant migrant market on the outskirts of Miami, the series captures the daily intersections of diverse communities while reflecting the artist’s own experiences as a migrant. For Muñoz, Redland is more than a backdrop; it is a space that mirrors his journey, recalling memories of separation, evolving family connections, and the ongoing search for a sense of home. Muñoz’s approach goes beyond simple documentation. Rather than freezing a single moment, his images explore migration as a fluid, continuous experience shaped by movement, memory, and the pursuit of connection. The individuals in his photographs are not distant subjects—they resonate with echoes of the artist’s own life, conveying the resilience, vulnerability, and quiet determination that accompany the migrant experience. Each frame invites viewers to linger with the emotional complexity of displacement, acknowledging both loss and hope without offering tidy explanations. At its core, Belonging in Transit reframes belonging itself as a dynamic process. It is not a static destination but a condition constantly negotiated through lived experience. Through the juxtaposition of faces, gestures, and spaces, the exhibition emphasizes the universality of the search for home, community, and understanding, highlighting the shared human need for continuity and recognition. Muñoz’s work fosters empathy by revealing the intimate, often invisible, emotional landscape of migration. His photographs balance tenderness and honesty, capturing moments of quiet resilience, fleeting joy, and reflective contemplation. By situating personal narrative within a broader social context, Belonging in Transit offers a meditation on identity, place, and the ongoing effort to claim space in a world defined by movement and change. The exhibition is both a testimony to individual journeys and a reminder of our collective capacity for empathy and connection. Image: © Carlos Muñoz

Urban Forms brings together a newly acquired selection of photographs and the longstanding commitment of the Juan Carlos Maldonado Collection to geometric abstraction, creating a dialogue between image, architecture, and modernist aspiration. With this exhibition, JCMC highlights the conceptual and formal currents that connect Paolo Gasparini’s visual investigations to the broader legacy of 20th-century abstract thought. Gasparini, the Italian-Venezuelan photographer whose career spans more than six decades, is celebrated for his incisive reflections on Latin American urban life. In these photographs, he turns his attention to the monumental modernist projects that reshaped Brazil and Venezuela during the mid-century. His images, rich in contrast and rhythmic structure, reveal striking affinities between architectural innovation and the language of geometric abstraction. The exhibition positions these photographs not simply as documentary records, but as visual essays that echo the principles of Bauhaus, Neoplasticism, and the early Soviet avant-garde. By placing Gasparini’s work in conversation with the abstract-geometric masterpieces within the collection, Urban Forms underscores how artists and architects across continents pursued similar visions: the activation of surfaces through line and pattern, the intelligent modulation of light, and the creation of spaces capable of conveying emotional as well as functional clarity. These shared pursuits transformed cities into dynamic environments, where concrete and color could coexist with texture, shadow, and human presence. The show ultimately invites viewers to retrace this intertwined history of modern creativity. From late-19th-century formal experiments to the ambitious urban programs of the mid-20th century, visual artists and architects—sometimes unwittingly, sometimes in close alliance—imagined new ways of shaping the modern city. Their work sought to humanize expanding urban landscapes and to infuse them with aesthetic vitality. In this way, Urban Forms is more than an exhibition: it is an opportunity to reflect on the cultural ideals that animated modernity and the enduring connection between the built environment and the abstract visions that helped define it. Image: © Paolo Gasparini

From the years of the Second World War through the 1970s, photojournalist Ruth Orkin dedicated her lens to capturing women who were reshaping their roles in a rapidly changing society. This exhibition of 21 vintage photographs from the National Museum of Women in the Arts collection reveals Orkin’s deep curiosity about women forging their own paths—as artists, mothers, service members, and travelers. Born in Boston in 1921, the daughter of a silent film actress, Orkin grew up surrounded by storytelling and image-making. Her career would span both glamour and grit, from photographing Hollywood stars to documenting women’s everyday triumphs in classrooms, parks, and city streets across America. Orkin’s photography offers a rare blend of empathy and strength. Whether capturing members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, tourists wandering through postwar Europe, or Broadway performers caught between rehearsals, she sought authenticity above all. Her portraits convey confidence and individuality, revealing women who were not simply being observed but seen on their own terms. Through her collaborative approach, Orkin deliberately reversed the traditional dynamics of the male gaze, transforming photography into an exchange between equals rather than a spectacle of power. Although Orkin initially dreamed of becoming a filmmaker, her ambitions were curtailed when the cinematographers’ union barred women from joining. Undeterred, she brought a cinematic sensibility to her still images—each photograph feels like a fragment of a larger story. Later in life, she would work alongside her husband in film, but photography remained her truest medium for narrative expression. Whether portraying children at play, celebrities at work, or neighbors on the streets of New York, Ruth Orkin imbued every frame with vitality, dignity, and a sense of wonder for the everyday stories that shape human experience. Image: Ruth Orkin, American Girl in Italy, 1951 (printed 1980 by Ruth Orkin Estate); Gelatin silver print, 23 x 28 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Promised gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling

Drawing from the extensive holdings of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, this new exhibition offers an intimate look at the immigrant experience in New York, tracing how generations of newcomers have shaped the city’s character through their daily lives, traditions, and perseverance. With more than one hundred photographs and related objects, the exhibition reveals how visual stories—captured in homes, streets, workplaces, and places of worship—form a mosaic of resilience and renewal. At the heart of the exhibition is a series of images documenting the aftermath of the 1904 General Slocum steamboat disaster, a tragedy that profoundly altered one family and reshaped entire neighborhoods. These photographs, filled with quiet grief and stark testimony, help illuminate how catastrophic events leave lasting marks not only on individuals but also on the evolving fabric of the city. They stand alongside photographs taken throughout the 20th century that depict countless moments of ordinary yet meaningful life: children learning and playing, elders gathering in community centers, seamstresses and factory workers laboring to build stability, and families adjusting to new rhythms in unfamiliar surroundings. The exhibition also celebrates the spiritual and cultural diversity that has long defined New York. Images of Greek Orthodox liturgies, Cambodian Buddhist ceremonies, Jewish synagogue gatherings, and Sikh temple rituals underscore the ways immigrants have carried their faith traditions with them, anchoring new communities while enriching the city’s broader identity. Street vendors, corner shops, and bustling storefronts—selling foods from Ethiopia, Italy, Haiti, the Philippines, and beyond—reveal how cuisine becomes both a bridge to home and a gift to the neighborhoods where newcomers settle. Through these photographs, visitors are invited to consider the ongoing story of migration: a narrative of courage, adaptation, and the quiet determination to build a life in a city shaped by countless journeys. Each image echoes with the spirit of those who arrived seeking possibility, leaving an enduring imprint on New York’s past and present. Image: Looking west from Norfolk Street along Hester Street (Manhattan) around 1898. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library Collection

Internationally renowned artist Ann Hamilton is best known for large-scale ephemeral installations, performances, and civic monuments, but the use of photography and video runs throughout her 35-year career and has become increasingly important to her practice over the past decade. This exhibition juxtaposes past works with new creations, including some related to the museum and its collections. Explored in all this work is the relationship between touch, sight, and language. Hamilton’s interest in tactility recalls her origins as a textile artist. A central theme of her practice is the connection between feeling, understanding, and sensory experience, especially touch. Born in Lima, Ohio, and living in Columbus, Hamilton is Ohio’s most influential and best-known living visual artist. Among her many honors are the National Medal of the Arts, Heinz Award, MacArthur Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Hamilton represented the United States in the 1991 Sao Paulo Bienal and the 1999 Venice Biennale and has exhibited extensively around the world. Image: sense • stone, 2022. Ann Hamilton (American, b. 1956). Archival pigment print on Japanese gampi paper

Xavier Tavera’s Borderlands offers a moving exploration of the U.S.–Mexico border, a place shaped as much by memory and community as by the lines drawn across it. Presented at the Sioux City Art Center, the exhibition traces the landscapes and lives that inhabit this region, revealing a territory that is never as simple as a map might suggest. Beginning the project in 2016, Tavera set out to document not only the physical realities of the border, but also the emotional and cultural layers that make it a site of shared experience. Across the series, viewers encounter sweeping desert horizons, quiet border towns, and the imposing structures that attempt to define separation—fences, towers, and coils of sharp wire. Yet these images are consistently balanced by scenes of celebration, faith, and everyday resilience. Tavera photographs families gathering at festivals, workers pausing in the sun, and individuals whose faces carry both the burdens and the hope of the place they call home. In this way, the border emerges not as a hard divide but as a living environment shaped by human presence. Tavera has described the border wall as a “man-made scar,” and some photographs underscore that stark reality. Still, the spirit of Borderlands reaches far beyond political tension. His portraits honor the dignity of those who inhabit the region, offering a view of the border that acknowledges struggle while refusing to overlook tenderness and connection. Born in Mexico City and now living in Minneapolis, Tavera has long focused on amplifying Latino stories through empathetic, carefully observed photography. With Borderlands, he extends that commitment, presenting the border not merely as a line that divides nations, but as a place where identities mingle, histories overlap, and humanity endures. Image: Guadalupano, 2023 archival pigment print 32 x 24” Courtesy of the artist © Xavier Tavera

The exhibition Alvin Lester: Portraits of Jackson Ward and Beyond presents twenty compelling portraits taken by photographer Alvin Lester in the late 1980s and early 1990s, capturing the heart and humanity of Richmond’s historic neighborhoods. With a keen eye for character and community, Lester turned his lens toward the people and businesses that defined Jackson Ward—once known as the “Harlem of the South”—as well as the surrounding areas of Northside and Church Hill. Through his portraits, Lester documented beauticians, bakers, real estate brokers, and journalists—individuals whose daily work sustained Richmond’s Black business and cultural life. His images reveal the vibrancy and resilience of the city’s Second Street business district, a place that, in the decades following the Civil War, became a cornerstone of Black entrepreneurship and civic pride. Lester’s approach was both personal and historical: he understood that a city’s essence is reflected in those who build, serve, and nurture it. Each portrait is more than a likeness; it is an act of preservation. Lester’s work honors not only the individuals he photographed but also the collective memory of a community that has faced—and transcended—economic, political, and social challenges. His subjects are presented with dignity and intimacy, standing as symbols of endurance and continuity within Richmond’s evolving landscape. Now part of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection, these photographs form a visual archive of a crucial period in the city’s history. Curated by Dr. Sarah Kennel, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how photography can both record and celebrate cultural heritage. In capturing the soul of Jackson Ward and beyond, Alvin Lester leaves a lasting tribute to the spirit of Black Richmond—a reminder that community, rooted in history, continues to define the life of a city. Image: Robert Wagstaff, Shoe Cobbler (detail), 1989–91, Alvin Lester (American, born 1947), gelatin silver print. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, National Endowment for the Arts Fund, 2025.96. © Alvin Lester

Now or Never by Josephine Sacabo invites viewers into a realm where memory, longing, and poetic reverie meet the tactile richness of the photogravure process. The exhibition presents twenty new photogravures — including a quartet of hand-colored works — each one a delicate convergence of light, texture, and emotional depth. On view from December 13, 2025 through March 30, 2026, the show also marks the release of Sacabo’s latest book, TAGGED, available in both trade and collector’s editions. Sacabo divides her time between New Orleans and Mexico, two places that deeply inform her visual sensibility. Born in Laredo, Texas and educated at Bard College, she spent years living and working in France and England before settling in New Orleans. Over time, her artistic path shifted: from a more documentary-influenced origin to a deeply personal, introspective style rooted in poetry and metaphor. The landscapes, light, and atmosphere of her homes dissolve into dreamlike visions that feel both intimate and universal. Her work often begins with words. Inspired by poets such as Rilke, Baudelaire, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Juan Rulfo, Sacabo crafts images that serve as visual poems — meditations on identity, memory, and presence. Each photograph becomes a translation of language into light and shadow, where reality is filtered through dream, memory, and longing. This gives her images a suspended quality: familiar, yet removed, real yet uncanny. The photogravure medium — with its rich tonal range, deep blacks, and subtle gradients — lends itself to this sense of inner depth. Hand-colored pieces add another layer of nuance, suggesting emotion, loss, and hope beyond the black-and-white register. In the gallery, the prints appear as fragile relics from an inner world, inviting viewers to step quietly between memory and imagination. For nearly fifty years, Sacabo has built a body of work that transcends traditional photographic boundaries. Her photographs are not mere representations but meditations — beautiful, haunting, and soulful. Now or Never is more than an exhibition: it is an invitation to dwell in silence, to reflect on what lies beyond visible surface, and to discover the poetry inherent in light, shadow, and time. Image: Sacabo: "Eve,” 2025 - © Josephine Sacabo

As Above So Below brings together the distinct yet resonant practices of Melinda Hurst Frye and Jessica Hays in an exhibition that reflects on ecology, perception, and the emotional landscapes shaped by place. Presented at the Griffin Museum’s satellite gallery in the Lafayette City Center Passageway in downtown Boston, the exhibition unfolds in a transitional urban space—an apt setting for work that considers what lies beneath surfaces and beyond immediate sight. Through photography and alternative processes, both artists invite viewers to slow down and look closely, whether at the forest floor or the inner terrain of human experience. Melinda Hurst Frye’s work centers on the often-overlooked understory of the Pacific Northwest. Using a flatbed scanner as a camera, she embraces a deliberate, contemplative method that allows natural materials to register time, touch, and proximity. Her images reveal mosses, fungi, and regenerative cycles that sustain forest ecosystems, offering a quiet meditation on interdependence and stewardship. Rooted in Cascadia, her practice bridges art and ecology, transforming scientific observation into poetic visual narratives that honor resilience and renewal. Jessica Hays approaches landscape from a more internal perspective, blending personal history with broader environmental and psychological concerns. Grounded in the American West, her work examines how land shapes identity, memory, and mental health. Through pigment prints, handmade books, video, and experimental processes, Hays explores themes of trauma, solastalgia, and climate grief, particularly in relation to wildfires and their lasting impact on communities. Her images move fluidly between the personal and the collective, reflecting shared anxieties while preserving intimate emotional truths. Together, Frye and Hays create a dialogue between what is seen and what is felt, between natural systems and human vulnerability. The exhibition’s title gestures toward this balance, suggesting a mirrored relationship between outer environments and inner states. While their approaches differ in technique and tone, both artists share a commitment to attentiveness, care, and the acknowledgment of cycles—destruction and regeneration, loss and restoration. As Above So Below offers a thoughtful encounter with photography as a tool for witnessing and reflection. In a time of environmental uncertainty and emotional strain, the exhibition reminds us that understanding our surroundings—whether beneath our feet or within ourselves—remains essential to navigating a changing world. Image: © Jessica Hayes

Caroline Gray: Dancing Deeply, Dream is presented from February 24 through March 30, 2026 at Skidmore Contemporary Art. The exhibition gathers a recent body of work devoted to underwater dancers, images that blur the boundary between choreography and current. Within the gallery, viewers encounter photographs that seem to hover between stillness and motion, where bodies drift in luminous suspension and the surface of the water becomes a shifting mirror. California-based photographer Caroline Gray approaches her subjects with a painter’s sensitivity to light, color, and atmosphere. Beneath the surface, gravity relinquishes its authority. Fabric billows, limbs arc and recoil, hair traces calligraphic lines through the water. The dancers’ gestures expand and contract in response to unseen tides, creating compositions that feel both spontaneous and carefully resolved. Gray describes a fascination with the sensuousness of the human body in water, and her images convey that captivation through soft tonal gradations and radiant highlights. The work resonates with the dreamlike experimentation associated with photographers such as André Kertész, while also recalling the theatrical aquatic tableaux of contemporary artists like Christy Lee Rogers. Yet Gray maintains a distinct visual language. Her underwater realm does not function as spectacle alone; it becomes a contemplative space where human presence meets the immensity of the natural world. The figures appear at once powerful and vulnerable, enveloped by a medium that both supports and obscures them. Exhibited in California and the United Kingdom, Gray’s photographs reflect an ongoing dialogue between body and environment. In Dancing Deeply, Dream, water serves as collaborator rather than backdrop. The resulting images suggest that identity, like motion beneath the surface, remains fluid—shaped by light, breath, and the quiet pull of unseen currents. Image: Caroline Gray, Dancing With Light 63 x 57 inches, 2014 photograph © Caroline Gray

Winter Group Exhibition, on view from January 15 through March 31, 2026 at C+C Photography Gallery, ushers in the height of the Palm Beach season with a vibrant survey of classic and contemporary photography. Located at 313 1/2 Worth Avenue, the gallery presents a dynamic installation that bridges eras, genres, and perspectives, offering collectors and visitors an opportunity to engage with masterworks alongside compelling new voices in the medium. The exhibition brings together a distinguished roster of artists whose images have shaped the visual language of fashion, portraiture, documentary, and conceptual photography. Iconic works by Horst P. Horst and George Hoyningen-Huene evoke the elegance and sculptural refinement of twentieth-century fashion imagery, while photographs by Norman Parkinson capture a spirit of movement and modern glamour. In dialogue with these historic figures, contemporary practitioners such as Steve McCurry and Dean West expand the narrative through richly colored storytelling and meticulously staged scenes. The selection further explores portraiture and constructed identity through the satirical lens of Alison Jackson, as well as evocative landscape and wildlife studies by Guadalupe Laiz. Architectural fantasies by Laurent Chéhère introduce an element of surreal transformation, while documentary and street perspectives add immediacy and human connection. Together, these works reveal photography’s enduring capacity to oscillate between observation and invention. Installed with an eye toward visual rhythm and thematic resonance, the Winter Group Exhibition celebrates photography as both historical record and evolving art form. By presenting a range of styles—from silver gelatin prints to bold contemporary color compositions—the exhibition reflects the gallery’s commitment to honoring tradition while embracing innovation. In the refined setting of Worth Avenue, this seasonal presentation offers a compelling reminder of photography’s power to define cultural memory and contemporary vision alike. Image: Nathan Coe, Breaking the Rules Again, 2019 © Nathan Coe, courtesy of the C+C Photography Gallery