This is one of the most unusual exhibitions of the month. Here is the announcement from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta:
The High Museum of Art presents Kelli Connell : Pictures for Charis, an exhibition featuring a body of work by Kelli Connell (American, born 1974) that reconsiders the complicated relationship between writer Charis Wilson and photographer Edward Weston from a contemporary queer and feminist perspective. Co-organized by the High, the University of Arizona Center for Creative Photography and the Cleveland Museum of Art, the exhibition will make its debut at the High before traveling to the other two venues.
Through a close examination of Wilson’s prose and Weston’s photographs, Connell enriches our understanding of the couple and weaves their stories together with her own artistic practice. Using their publications and archives as a guide, Connell and her partner, Betsy Odom, traveled to locales where Wilson and Weston lived, made work and spent time together. Along the way, Connell collaboratively made photographs of Odom that upend conventional notions of photographer and muse. She also photographed, in a raw and less idealized manner, the grand Western landscapes that Weston made iconic 75 years before.
“This exhibition offers a fresh perspective on the evolving dynamic of artist and muse – combining Wilson’s and Weston’s historical photographs and texts with Connell’s contemporary work in a dynamic and thought-provoking presentation,” said Rand Suffolk, the High’s director. “We are thankful to our co-organizers for their collaboration, and we look forward to bringing these works together for the first time in the show.”
The exhibition will include more than 40 of Connell’s recent portrait and landscape photographs, including many large-scale 40-by-50-inch images, along with dozens of Weston’s classic figure studies and landscapes made between 1934 and 1945, one of his most productive periods and the span of his relationship with Wilson. Four of Connell’s photographs in the exhibition are drawn from the High’s collection, exemplifying the museum’s recent commitment to growing its holdings of work by queer artists.
Kelli Connell : Pictures for Charis
September 20, 2024 – January 5, 2025)
High Museum of Art
1280 Peachtree Street, N.E.
Atlanta, Georgia 30309
www.high.org
