Through Sun 6/5
Many people aren’t aware that there’s an outstanding collection of fine photography right here in northeast Ohio — at the Akron Art Museum. Only a fraction of it can be on view at any given time.
Since 1991, it has enhanced that collection with its (approximately) annual Knight Foundation Purchase Award for Photographic Media. This award allows it to purchase work by the winning artist and add it to its permanent collection.
Now it’s showing some of the wealth of photographic art its acquired in a show called Responsibility to Reveal: 30 Years of The Knight Purchase Award for Photographic Media, now on view, which runs through Sunday June 5 in the Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries. The show’s name comes from author James Baldwin who wrote, “The artist is distinguished from all other responsible actors in society… [by] his responsibility to reveal all that he can possibly discover concerning the mystery of the human being.”
The show features more than 75 images by 21 artists, which run the gamut of styles from photojournalism to portraits to landscapes to conceptual pieces. The works on view include two by 2022 Knight Purchase Award winner, South African artist and self-dubbed “visual activist” Zanele Muholi: “Loba V, Paris” and “Wenzeni I, City Lodge Hotel, OR Tambo airport, Johannesburg.” They are part of a series of self-portraits titled Somnyama Ngonyama, Zulu for “Hail the Dark Lioness.”
Learn more about the show here.