BRATTLEBORO — The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) presents “Minor White: Photographer, Teacher, Advocate,” a free online talk by art historian Catherine Barth on Thursday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. Register at brattleboromuseum.org.
Barth received her doctorate degree in art history from Emory University in 2021. Her dissertation, “Frederick Sommer: Photography at the Limits of the Avant-Garde,” includes an examination of Sommer's relationship with White as well as with Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Nancy and Beaumont Newhall, all key figures in White's career.
A 2019 recipient of a Minor White Archive Research Grant from Princeton University, Barth's research included an examination of White's role as co-founder and editor of the photography magazine Aperture.
She held a Mellon Graduate Fellowship in Object-Centered Curatorial Research in the photography department at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
This event is presented in connection with “Sequences: Ode to Minor White,” a BMAC exhibition of contemporary works of art that evoke White's aesthetic and philosophical ideas.
Curator Katherine Gass Stowe made note of White's role as a teacher in an essay accompanying the exhibit.
“White was a photographer, educator, writer-critic, poet, and philosopher with a penchant for capturing 'presence' in his work, something he tried to teach other aspiring photographers,” Gass Stowe wrote.
“His long career deeply influenced students of all kinds and threaded him through the most important developments in photography in the mid-twentieth century, bringing him into close relationships with the art world's key innovators.”
The artists featured in “Sequences: Ode to Minor White” are Jessica Judith Beckwith, Andrea Belag, William Eric Brown, Niqui Carter, and Kevin Larmon, along with a selection of vintage photographs by Minor White on loan from the Bank of America Art Collection. The exhibit is on view through Oct. 11.