{"id":6478,"date":"2024-09-26T11:36:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T16:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mam.org\/info\/pressroom\/?p=6478"},"modified":"2024-10-31T11:23:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T16:23:52","slug":"new-milwaukee-art-museum-exhibition-explores-the-relationships-between-news-and-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mam.org\/info\/pressroom\/2024\/09\/new-milwaukee-art-museum-exhibition-explores-the-relationships-between-news-and-images\/","title":{"rendered":"New Milwaukee Art Museum Exhibition Explores the Relationships Between News and Images"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Spotlighting the Museum\u2019s collection, True Story: Photography, Journalism, and Media<\/em> features more than 100 works of art.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILWAUKEE, WI<\/strong>\u2014September 25, 2024\u2014Drawing from its collection, the Milwaukee Art Museum presents more than 100 objects in the exhibition True Story: Photography, Journalism, and Media<\/a><\/em>, demonstrating how photographers and artists have understood and wielded the power of images to convey the events of our world. Featuring artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries, the exhibition will be on view November 15, 2024\u2013March 16, 2025<\/strong>, in the Museum\u2019s Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHighlighting artworks significant to the Museum\u2019s collection and the history of photojournalism, True Story<\/em> demonstrates how images have had the power to shape the way we understand the events of our time,\u201d said Elizabeth Siegel, chief curator<\/strong> at the Milwaukee Art Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Robert Heinecken (American, 1931\u20132006), Untitled<\/em>, from the series Are You Rea<\/em>, 1964\u201368. Gelatin silver print. 5 7\/16 x 7 1\/4 in. (13.81 x 18.42 cm). Purchase, with funds from the Ralph and Cora Oberndorfer Family Trust, M2009.20<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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True Story<\/em> invites us to assess how we produce, consume, and understand photographs and their narratives. The exhibition\u2019s accompanying looking guide directs audiences to pay attention to an image\u2019s context and consider its creator\u2019s motivations, highlighting the nuances of photography and the significance of media literacy. Demonstrating the strength of the Museum\u2019s documentary photography holdings, the exhibition features treasures of the collection\u2014photographs, magazines, collages, and a film\u2014by pioneering photographers and artists in a three-part presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition begins with \u201cOne Small Frame,\u201d a section devoted to single images that show the complexities of news events distilled to a singular moment. Taken by celebrated photographers like Robert Capa and Eugene Smith as well as unidentified image makers at Wisconsin News and Associated Press, each work captures the entirety of one news story\u2014a car crash, a parade, a march, a Packers game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The field-defining photojournalists featured in \u201cA Unified Thread,\u201d including Lewis Wickes Hine, Wayne Miller, Danny Lyon, and Larry Burrows, used multiple images to create the narratives of the news they covered. Hine, for example, collaborated with the National Child Labor Committee to expose the working conditions of young children in textile mills, advocating for labor law reform. Lyon documented the civil rights activists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, using photography\u2019s power to inspire action. Whether pursuing their own interests or working on assignment for a publication, these photographers shared the news through in-depth series of images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artists featured in \u201cMedia Messages\u201d reflect on and critique the role photographic images play in the media landscape at large. In Redheaded Peckerwood<\/em> (2005\u20132011), Wisconsin-born artist Christian Patterson considers the media\u2019s role in shaping crime reporting, focusing on a 1955 murder spree that presages the modern-day interest in true crime. Early works by William Weege, renowned printmaker and founder of Tandem Press in Madison, use collaged magazine photographs to indict the Vietnam War. Alongside pieces by Patterson and Weege are works by artists Bruce Conner, Taryn Simon, and Robert Heinecken, who bring attention to how the \u201ctruths\u201d of photography can be misused and subverted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrue Story<\/em> provides a glimpse into the long relationship between news and photography,\u201d said the exhibition\u2019s curator Ariel Pate, assistant curator of photography<\/strong> at the Milwaukee Art Museum. \u201cAs the media landscape continues to grow and evolve, I hope our visitors gain an appreciation for media literacy as a crucial skill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the notable works featured in True Story<\/em> are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n