BENTONVILLE — Harry Miller's Vision of Arkansas: 1900-1910, a traveling exhibit of 30 photographs, opened Friday at Crystal Bridges at the Massey, the temporary exhibition space in downtown Bentonville for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Miller, a Batesville-based photographer, used a cumbersome glass-plate camera to document the Natural State's people and landscapes with detail unrivaled by the film cameras of the time, said Chris Crosman, the museum's chief curator.
Miller's photos show work along the White River, scenic landscapes and black families at work on the farm, an image rarely captured in his time.
"We wanted to find something with state and regional significance," Crosman said. "In a way, we're sort of test-marketing what people respond to."
The museum plans to use temporary exhibits leading up to its grand opening - which has not been announced - to educate the region's public about art and build interest in the project, Crosman said.
Plans are for Crystal Bridges' permanent collection to cover American masterworks. A majority of the 50,000-square-foot gallery and display space will house American paintings from the Colonial era to the 21st century. Organizers also are incorporating art of significance to Arkansans, Crosman said.
"We want the world to know that the Ozarks has a rich cultural history in and of itself," he said.
The Miller exhibit, a collection of black-and-white photographs taken from two of the photographer's personal albums, is on loan from the Old Independence Regional Museum in Batesville. It also includes reprints from his original glass-plate negatives, stored at the Museum of Discovery in Little Rock and turn-of-thecentury items from the Springdale-based Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, including tools, children's clothing and a camera similar to the one Miller used.
Miller lived in downtown Batesville, working as a portrait photographer in the early 1900s. Little was known about his extensive documentary work untilhis great niece, Marilyn Brewer, contacted Arkansas museums, offering to underwrite an exhibit based on albums gathered from her cousins.
"Eventually, we realized that they were pretty special," said Brewer, now 72 and living in northern California. "It's terrific to see them here, getting such good exposure."
Independent curator Jo Blatti worked to assemble the exhibit when she was the director of the Old Independence Regional Museum. She was drawn to Miller's personal passion to accurately capture images that crossed barriers of race and social status.
Using a glass-format camera,which shot large, inflexible negatives, was inconvenient, but it captured more detail and allowed for larger prints, Blatti said.
"Documentary photography was not commercially viable at that time, and he photographed a lot of things that the culture at large wasn't very interested in," she said. "But he did it in an appealing way. This guy looks like he studied painting."
The exhibit runs through Oct. 25. In addition to regular gallery hours, the museum staff plans to hold special events related to Miller's work, including a study of photographic formats, a teen poetry workshop and a discussion of race relations in the state.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 08/22/2009