Femmetography: The Gaze Shifted

Open now & ongoing.

In this exhibition, Femmetography: The Gaze Shifted, the 2019 Teen Curators examine the Black feminine gaze using the first book documenting Black women photographers as a guide, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s 1985 opus, Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers. Moutoussamy-Ashe unravels the histories of these pioneering photographers and creates a space for their narratives to be discovered. As a new generation engages with this work, they wonder: what does the Black feminine gaze mean today? This fourth annual Teen Curators exhibition features portraiture, experimental photography, and archival materials. The Teen Curators program, where arts education leads to increased historical and cultural literacy for high school participants, culminates each season of aesthetic engagements and curatorial projects with an exhibition. Students work closely with curators and librarians from all of the Schomburg Center’s research divisions – Art and Artifacts; Manuscripts Archives and Rare Books; Moving Image and Recorded Sound; Photographs and Prints; the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference.  

This exhibition will remain open through spring 2020 in the American Negro Theatre of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The Schomburg Teen Curators program is generously funded for five years by the Pierre & Tana Matisse Foundation.

Photo Credit: A hairstyle by Winifred Hall Allen, taken from the book, Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers. Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Open now. Ends June 12th, 2050. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, American Negro Theatre