BENTONVILLE -- Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art traces the visual legacy of American photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams with the new, temporary exhibit Ansel Adams in Our Time.
The exhibition presents the famed artist's work in a contemporary context by placing more than 100 of his photos in conversation with his 19th-century predecessors as well as works from present-day photographers. There are 182 total objects in the exhibition.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston organized the Adams exhibit and divided the work into seven thematic sections based on the places and themes Adams shot throughout his career: western beginnings, marketing the view, becoming a modernist, picturing the national parks, in the American Southwest, the other side of the mountains and the changing landscape.
The first room of the exhibit, the section titled western beginnings, lays the foundation for the exhibition as visitors are met with some of Adams' first photographs from his early teenage years. The space includes works by Carleton Watkins, who influenced Adams, and pieces by contemporary photographers Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe, who replicate pieces by their photographic predecessors.
"Ansel Adams is the backbone of this exhibition," said Alejo Benedetti, associate curator of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges, during the media preview of the exhibition Thursday.
This first section "is setting up what we're doing with the rest of the show, which is looking back, but also looking forward," Benedetti added.
The sweeping landscape photography often first comes to mind when thinking on Adams' work and his technical contributions to the medium are included in the exhibition, Benedetti assured. But the inclusion of sections such as marketing the view, becoming a modernist, the other side of the mountains and the changing landscape offer a more complete picture of Adams' five-decade career.
Some of the modern artists included in the exhibition, such as Klett and Wolfe, have work responding directly to Adams' legacy. Others, such as Catherine Opie, bring contemporary sensibilities to the structure established during Adams' era.
"Catherine Opie is asking, 'How do I assert my voice, a feminist voice, in the national parks?'" Benedetti said. "It is a space that is traditionally dominated by someone like Ansel or his predecessors."
Thinking on the national parks also prompts questions of belonging, Benedetti said. Expanding on that sentiment, Stace Treat, head of interpretation, said it was important to organizers to acknowledge the fraught history between the National Park Service and people of color.
"We wanted to not just mythologize the national parks and present everything as tidy, as has been done in the past," Treat said.
The inclusion of immigrants' relationship with the iconic vistas often considered "quintessentially American," work by indigenous artists, and depictions from the Manzanar War Relocation Camp during World War II offer varied perspectives of the American experience. The section includes work by Adams and by Japanese American photographer Toyo Miyatake.
The exhibition concludes with both grim and uplifting themes in the same space. Though Adams famously claimed to have never created a photograph for political purposes, that statement should be taken with a grain of salt, Benedetti said. The changing landscape section of the exhibition highlights Adams' and contemporary artists' works that focus on humanity's impact on the environment.
Two large, powerful photographs by Laura McPhee show the devastation of a forest fire, drawing obvious connections to the fires currently raging along the West Coast.
This section also seeks to offer inspiration. An engagement opportunity titled Channel Your Inner Ansel near the end of the exhibition invites guests to venture into nature and create their own images. Images shared with Crystal Bridges through the exhibition hashtag will populate an engagement wall in real time. As the exhibition approaches its closing date, Benedetti will choose three of the images submitted by visitors to be printed and displayed in the gallery.
Though guests are prompted to contemplate humanity's continued effect on the environment in this last section, their final view is one of of hope. To the right of the exhibition exit is a striking self portrait photograph of the artist. To the left is a Gaelic proverb, cited by Adams in his 1985 biography:
"I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains. Let our spirits be stars. Let our hearts be worlds."
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Ansel Adams in Our Time
• When: Saturday to Jan. 3
• Where: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville
• Cost: $12; members, veterans and youth younger than 18, free
• Info: 418-5700, crystalbridges.org
Source: Crystal Bridges
Jocelyn Murphy can be reached by email at jmurphy@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWAJocelyn.