January 12, 2023 | 5:00 pm
2pm PST / 3pm MST / 4pm CST / 5pm EST
Please join us for a virtual discussion of Craft and Camera: The Art of Nancy Ford Cones, with ArtTable member Rebekah Beaulieu, Louise Taft Semple President & CEO of the Taft Museum of Art, and Pepper Stetler, Guest Curator and Associate Professor of Art History at Miami University’s College of Creative Arts.
On a small riverside farm in Loveland, Ohio, Nancy Ford Cones created photographs that earned her a national reputation during a time when female artists continued to struggle for recognition. Despite the praise they received during her lifetime, Cones’s imaginative and exquisitely crafted works were largely forgotten after her death. This exhibition resurrects the gifted artist’s career and contributions to the field of photography.
Between about 1900 and 1939, Cones made thousands of photographs that featured country life, fantastical visions, and literary characters. To create her images, she employed the help of neighbors, friends, and family who posed in costume around the farm and its environs. Working in partnership with her husband James, who printed her work using a variety of techniques and papers, Cones conceived evocative subjects that emulated 19th-century European paintings.
Nancy Ford Cones’s photographs were published in prestigious journals such as Camera Craft, as well as in popular outlets that included National Geographic magazine and Kodak advertisements. The first major presentation of her work, this exhibition and its accompanying catalog will demonstrate that she was an exceptional artist who rivaled the top photographers of her time.
Admission:
- ArtTable Circle Members – Free
- All Other ArtTable Members – $10
- General Public – $15
Not a member? Join today!
After registration, you will receive an email containing the Zoom link.
All virtual programs offer live automatic closed captioning.
About Rebekah Beaulieu
Rebekah “Becky” Beaulieu, Ph.D. is the Louise Taft Semple President/CEO of the Taft Museum of Art. She previously served as the Director of the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut and as Associate Director of the Bowdoin College of Art in Brunswick, Maine.
Becky is the author of Financial Fundamentals for Historic House Museums (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), co-editor of The State of Museums: Voices from the Field (MuseumsEtc., 2018), and author of the newly published Endowment Essentials for Museums (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). She holds an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and in Arts Administration from Columbia University; she earned her Ph.D. in American and New England Studies from Boston University. Becky also serves as an American Association of Museums’ Accreditation Commissioner, Treasurer of the American Association for State and Local History, and as editor of the American Association of State and Local History book series for Rowman & Littlefield.
About Pepper Stetler
Pepper Stetler, Associate Professor of Art History, received her B.A. from Barnard College (2001) and her M.A. and Ph.D. (2004, 2009) in Art History from the University of Delaware.
Professor Stetler’s research focuses on the art and visual culture of early twentieth-century Europe. Her book Stop Reading! Look!: Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2015, provides a new perspective on the prominence of photography in Germany Weimar Republic (1918-1933). It addresses how the display and sequencing of photographs in books relates to contemporary debates on modern visual experiences. Photographic books by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Karl Blossfeldt, Helmar Lerski, and August Sander figure prominently in her research.
Image: Nancy Ford Cones (American, 1869–1962), Mama’s Kodak, about 1912, gelatin silver print, 6 x 4 3/8 in. Collection of W. Roger and Patricia K. Fry
Melissa Diaz is the Head Curator and Museum Manager for the Deering Estate. Melissa is an Art Historian with a focus in Post-war Italian art, and contemporary art theory and practices. At the Deering Estate she oversees the historic house museums, coordinates and curates exhibitions, programing and directs the Estate’s multi-tiered Artist in Residence Program including visual, performing and literary arts.
Becky Franco was born in Havana, Cuba. She escaped Cuba with her family in 1961. She completed in the United States a BFA with Honors from Pratt Institute, New York in 1974. Becky has always been interested in painting on a large scale influenced by the Photo Realist movement of the seventies. Upon graduating, she sought employment in the difficult and male dominated field of outdoor advertising, where she got the opportunity to create large hand painted billboards and had the distinction to prove herself as a competent female artist. She became the first female billboard artist to be hired in the outdoor industry and join The Sign & Pictorial Display Union, Local #230 in the U.S.
Anna Musci came to the Driehaus Museum after a 30-year career engaged in new business strategy in the financial services industry and advisory services to private clients, family offices, nonprofit organizations, and corporations in wealth management and estate planning. She served as a business development liaison to the investment banking, commercial lending, and private client services divisions of UBS Financial Services, CIBC Oppenheimer, Alex. Brown & Sons, and LaSalle Bank. At the Driehaus Museum she led the retail development strategy and started the first External Affairs department before serving in her current role as the Museum’s Executive Director in 2020.
Stephanie Cristello (b. 1991) is a contemporary art critic, curator, and author based in Chicago, IL. Her work focuses on artists who critically engage with the image and its role in visual culture. Cristello was previously the Senior Editor US for ArtSlant (2012–2018). She is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of THE SEEN, Chicago’s International Journal of Contemporary & Modern Art. Her writing has been published in ArtReview, BOMB Magazine, Elephant Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Mousse Magazine, OSMOS, and Portable Gray, published by the University of Chicago Press. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 with a Liberal Arts Thesis in the Visual Critical Studies Department. She served as the Artistic Director of EXPO CHICAGO (2013–2020) and is currently the Director / Curator at Chicago Manual Style. In 2020–21 she was a Guest Curator at Kunsthal Aarhus (Denmark) and the Malmö Art Museum (Sweden), as well as a Curatorial Advisor to the 2020 Busan Biennale (South Korea). She is the author of Theodora Allen: Saturnine (Motto / Kunsthal Aarhus, 2021) and the forthcoming book Barbara Kasten: Architecture and Film 2015–2020 (Skira, 2022), which was awarded a publication grant from the Graham Foundation.
Sarah Schleuning is dedicated to presenting and promoting the power and impact of design to the public through exhibitions, publications, and programming. Schleuning has a record of organizing thoughtful exhibitions and programs that are not only high profile and highly popular, but also recognized for their contributions to scholarship. She has more than two decades of expertise in forming relationships with living designers and artists, bridging the gap between historical and contemporary design, and exploring how engaging with art and design can extend beyond museum walls. She is the Margot B. Perot Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Dallas Museum of Art, and her recent exhibitions and publications include the upcoming Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity, Electrifying Design: A Century of Lighting, and Curbed Vanity: A Contemporary Foil by Chris Schanck.
Kanitra Fletcher is the Associate Curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic Art, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art. Fletcher is responsible for guiding the museum’s collection of African American art. Prior to joining the National Gallery, Fletcher worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she oversaw the presentation of such major traveling exhibitions as Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power and Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, and began the co-organization of the U.S. iteration of Afro-Atlantic Histories, an exhibition that was first conceived and presented by the Museum de Arte São Paulo in Brazil. The exhibition was displayed at the MFA, Houston in fall 2021/winter 2022 and is now open at the National Gallery. Fletcher has published essays in books and journals and presented research at international conferences on Afro-diasporic art as it relates to politics of the body, gender, and labor as well as aesthetics and the avant-garde. Institutions where she previously worked include the Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Museum of Modern Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Since 2013, she has curated an ongoing video art series for Landmarks public art program at the University of Texas at Austin. Fletcher received a B.A. in English Literature from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, an M.A. in Latin American Studies with concentrations in Art History and Brazilian Studies from University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in History of Art from Cornell University.
Marcela Guerrero is the Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recently, she was part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945. In summer 2018, Guerrero curated the exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art. From 2014 to 2017 she worked as Curatorial Fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she was involved in the much-lauded exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative and guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta. Prior to her position at the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino Art Curatorial department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) where she served as Research Coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA). Guerrero’s writing has appeared in a variety of publications and has contributed articles to numerous exhibition catalogues. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero received her BA from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, and holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Daisy Nam is the curator at Ballroom Marfa, a contemporary art space located at the borderlands of Far West Texas. She recently co-edited a publication, Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts with Paper Monument. Previously from 2015–19, she was the assistant director at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University where she organized exhibitions, publications, and public programs working closely with artists to engage with the campus community and public at large. Prior, she curated and produced seven seasons of talks, screenings, performances, and workshops from 2008–2015 as the assistant director of public programs at the School of the Arts, Columbia University. Curatorial residencies and fellowships include: Marcia Tucker Senior Research Fellow at the New Museum, New York (2020); Bellas Artes, Bataan, Philippines (2020); Surf Point in York, Maine (2019); Gwangju Biennale Foundation, Korea (2018). She holds a master’s degree in Curatorial and Critical Studies from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in Art History and Cinema Studies from New York University. She has taught at RISD, and lectured at Lesley University, Northeastern, SMFA/Tufts, SVA as a visiting critic.
Brittany Webb is the inaugural Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth-Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection. In this role, Webb oversees the Museum’s collections, exhibitions, and programs of 20th century art and provides instruction for the School of Fine Arts at PAFA. Webb’s first exhibition at PAFA, Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale (November 2020-September 5, 2021) is co-curated with Jodi Throckmorton, Curator of Contemporary Art at PAFA. Webb is also organizing a major retrospective exhibition and catalogue of the work of the African American sculptor John Rhoden (1916-2001) and stewards a collection of nearly 300 sculptures by Rhoden, leading PAFA’s ongoing effort to place his artworks into the permanent collections of museums around the world.