: "Robert Adams: From the Missouri West," on view at the Princeton
University Art Museum until June 6, is the first exhibition of a
group of recently acquired photographs selected from the
acclaimed 1980 Aperture publication of the same name.
After gaining wide notice for his photographic exploration of the
suburbs surrounding Denver and Colorado Springs, Colo., Adams
turned his camera to the open spaces that had met the West's
first explorers and settlers. No longer untouched or heroic,
however, "From the Missouri West" traces more than a century of
impact and abuse that has extended to nearly every corner of a
land that had once seemed limitless.
"This exemplary group of images captures Adams reaching his
maturity as a photographer and a printmaker, and is arguably his
most influential body of work," commented Toby Jurovics,
associate curator of photography. "We are offered a landscape
that is often spare and depressing, one that will not allow for
the dramatic gesture, and yet these prints reveal a sense of
light and careful observation that remind us not just of what has
been lost, but that discovery is still possible."
Adams' photographs are being exhibited along with several recent
acquisitions by William Bell, Timothy H. O'Sullivan and A.J.
Russell, who were among the Nineteenth Century landscape
photographers that Adams looked to for insight and inspiration
when he began From the Missouri West.
This major acquisition of 28 photographs, 25 of which are on
view, joins a substantial body of Adams' work already in the
museum's collection, surveying the artist's career from 1968
through 1999.
Gallery talks by Jurovics will be offered on April 2 and 4.
Princeton University Art Museum is located in the center of
the Princeton University campus, next to Prospect House and
Gardens. For information, 609-258-3788 or
princetonartmuseum.org.
