Framing Moments: Photography from the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

Exhibition Dates: February 2, 2021 - May 15, 2021

This exhibition offers a distinct and inclusive overview of photography in the United States and beyond. Dr. Willis’s selected gems from the KIA's significant photography holdings range from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, revealing how photographers have the unique ability to preserve moments, people, and places. Expressly interested in highlighting the time in which these photographs were made and collected, Willis imagines the stories and events that encouraged KIA curators to acquire these images over the past 60 years.

This seminal exhibition includes nearly 100 photographs that juxtapose a diverse group of photographers who reveal everyday life across rural and urban communities, explore modern photographic aesthetics, document pivotal moments of social change and conflict, and present artists as both celebrities and ordinary people. Ansel Adams, Dawoud Bey, Matthew Brady, Sheila Pree Bright, Barbara Crane, Imogen Cunningham, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Danny Lyon, Barbara Morgan, Vik Muniz, Shirin Neshat, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, P. H. Polk, Diego Rivera, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, James VanDerZee, Edward Weston, Minor White, Garry Winogrand, Ernest Withers, and Marion Post Walcott among many others are included in the exhibition.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog with a featured essay by Dr. Deborah Willis, author of more than 30 publications and the 2000 MacArthur Fellow. This catalog is available for purchase in the Gallery Shop.