Virtual

This online exhibition brings together photographs by Arthur Griffin that capture moments from everyday life in Boston. Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Arthur Griffin became a photographer for Boston Globe and the New England photojournalist for Life and Time magazines in the 1930s. Through his lens, Griffin turns simple moments of everyday life into lasting memories.

© Griffin Museum of Photography

Griffin captured views of the Boston Harbor. The architecture of Boston rises in the background while people in the boats are foregrounded. The photograph on the right shows taking a boat tour and enjoying the view of the Boston Harbor was a popular activity back then as much as it is now.

© Griffin Museum of Photography

These photographs capture people engaging in various activities in the city with glimpses of Boston’s streets and old storefronts. The image in the middle captures Paul Revere’s House and visitors around it. The photograph on the right captures the Paul Revere Statue while a group of children are walking past it; the Old North Church is visible in the background. In these compositions, Griffin presents the historic locations as a part of a living city.

© Griffin Museum of Photography

Charles River is another location where Griffin took photographs. He captures groups of people canoeing and enjoying summertime surrounded by blooming trees of Charles River and away from the bustle of the city.

© Griffin Museum of Photography

These two photographs capture the Museum of Fine Arts from afar, while people in the foreground are spending time with friends and family. On the left is a group of children fishing in a pond and on the right are a families having a picnic. The landscape around the museum becomes a peaceful setting for these people to enjoy a day out. The monumental, classical architecture of the museum exemplifies the wide range of buildings present in Boston.

© Griffin Museum of Photography

These photographs were taken at Theater District. On the left is captured a large crowd on a busy street. In contrast to the peaceful views of the city, these provide a glimpse into Boston’s busy downtown and evening crowds. The bright signs create a dazzling, vibrant view, a symbol of life in a bustling city.

To view Arthur Griffin’s photographs visit Arthur Griffin Photo Archive.

Written and Curated by Deniz Bora – Curatorial Intern, Spring 2024

The Griffin Museum team is pleased to present photographs by various Massachusetts-area students in our Virtual Gallery. The in-person showcase will be at Milton Academy Commons Gallery, on view from May 5th – May 31st.

Opening reception and awards ceremony: Sunday, May 5th at 2:00pm. Hope to see you there!

Featuring work from Boston Arts Academy, Brooks School, Buckingham Browne & Nichols, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Chapel Hill Chauncy Hall School, Concord Carlisle High School, Framingham High School, Groton School, Lexington High School, Marblehead High School, Milton Academy, Norwood High School, Somerset Berkley High School, Waltham High School, The Governor’s Academy, The Rivers School, Winchester High School, & the Winsor School.

The Griffin Museum celebrates the craft of photography and the community it serves in its thirtieth year with our Annual Juried Members Exhibition.

Accompanying the in person exhibition curated and juried by Mazie Harris is an online showcase of 60 of our members curated by Executive Director, Crista Dix. This selection of work highlights the creativity of our members and their unique vision focused on the world around us.

The artists included in this online showcase (in alphabetical order)

Julia Arstorp, Mariette Pathy Allen, Linda Alterwitz, Duygu Aytac, Peter Balentine, Jill Bemis, Adrien Bisson, John Blom, Andrew Brilliant, Adele Quartley Brown, James Byrne, Jessica Cardulucci, Bill Chapman, Gina Cholick, Bill Clark, Ryn Clarke, Susan Irene Correia, Lee Cott, Donna Dangott, Jeremiah Dine, Laura Dodson, Steve Edson, Andrew Foster, Tresha Glenister, Cassandra Goldwater, Greg Heins, Sandy Hill, Susan Isaacson, Dawn Jacobsen, Susan Rosenberg Jones, Greg Jundanian, Jafar Shaghaghi Kayhan, Tira Khan, Molly Lamb, Jeff Larason, Mark Levinson, James Mahoney, Bruce Magnuson, CoCo McCabe, Kay McCabe, Julie McCarter, Jorg Meyer, Lyn Swett Miller, Christopher Morse, RJ Muna, Laila Nahar, Dale Niles, Yana Nosenko, Terrell Otey, David Oxton, Eliott Peacock, Astrid Reischwitz, John Rich, Pip Shepley, Aline Smithson, Lisa Tang Liu and J. David Tabor, Donna Tramontozzi, Phil Tuths, Martha Wakefield and Marsha Wilcox.

A catalog of the 30th Members Juried Exhibition is available featuring the Mazzie Harris exhibition and highlighting the online showcase.

The New England Portfolio Reviews are taking place April 5-7, 2024. We are so pleased to highlight the attendees of the reviews here.

Since 2009 NEPR has been co-produced by the Griffin Museum and the PRC with the mission of bringing reviewers and photographers together from New England and beyond for two days of discussion, networking, and gaining fresh perspective on one’s work. NEPR serves photographers who are just embarking on their careers, and more established photographers, all hoping to reach new audiences and gain fresh perspective on their work. The online format allows for an expansion of participants in volume and in location including reviewers such as gallerists, book publishers, museum professionals, critics, educators and advisors from all over the world who provide guidance and potential opportunities to grow artist practices.

We are pleased to present the 2024 NEPR Artist Index a compendium of the participating artists from across the country along with the six scholarship students from around New England.

The April 5th Keynote Speaker is Accra Shepp, photographer and writer, based in New York where he teaches at the School of Visual Arts. Shepp’s images have been exhibited worldwide in galleries and museums such as the African American Museum, Philadelphia, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum just to name a few. His work is the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and other institutions, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and the New York Review of Books.

Ader la Casa

Fictions constructed to protect, hide or to forget. National myths that become inseparable from personal memories, flooding family albums and burning child fantasies. I can think about the globality of certain tropes as the one of the hero, that same one that attempted to be a father but decided for a public life. This project, Arder la casa, explores the contingencies of political violence in Colombia through my family history and my father’s exile. In 2015, after finishing his term as mayor of a small town bordering Venezuela, my papa crossed the Colombian border — fleeing the political persecution he had been subjected to for decades. I remember him disappearing on different occasions when I was still a child. But fairy tales that my parents told me justified his absence. Now, for the first time, I could understand my family was fragmented and separated in the harshness of a country where political violence reaches the worst statistics in the world. Witchcraft, religion, socialism, and mafia culture are at play within the cultural environment of the story. My father’s exile marks an inflection point from which the project develops. Traveling between past, present, and future, I unveil our history to reveal traces of violence, separation, and cyclical escapes. The project utilizes archives such as pictures or newspaper clippings, paintings, analog photography, video, and sculpture.

Margarita V Beltrán is a Colombian artist and photographer based in Bogotá. Margarita has worked on issues of gender, race and political violence in the context of Colombia and Germany. Her long-term project “Arder la casa, on political violence, family and exile” explores the layers of violence in Colombia through the story of her family, who recognize themselves as victims of the armed conflict. This project was selected by the publishing house Hydra (Mexico) for the creation of a photobook. During her stay in Germany, she developed Reclaiming spaces BIPOC, a photographic project on structural racist violence in eastern Germany, which received funding from the German Ministry of Culture in 2021. She has taught photography with a decolonial approach at Bauhaus University. Margarita has exhibited in Photoville New York, PH Museum Italy, and several galleries and museums in Colombia. Margarita is a member of Diversify Photo and Native Agency.

Tokie Rome-Taylor: Reclamation

Challenging the norms of portraiture, Tokie Rome-Taylor’s work centers themes of ethnography, identity, and representation, as well as their intersections with photography’s influence on perception and public history. In these works, Rome-Taylor photographs children of color as her subjects, calling attention to previous hegemonic histories of the Western gaze. Against opulent backgrounds and adorned in regal attire, her subjects radiate an unwavering majesty, confronting biases and addressing racial gaps in traditional art-historical representation. Rome-Taylor’s work explores the perception of self and belonging, and how these begin in childhood.

Rome-Taylor’s work requires thorough ethnographic and historical research, specifically on the material culture and spiritual practice of enslaved individuals in the 19th century. A distinctive aspect is the depiction of children posing with their family heirlooms. These heirlooms bridge the present to the past, connecting viewers to ancestral stories and traditions. Rome-Taylor’s art becomes a multilayered narrative, not just about individual subjects but a broader exploration of cultural and historical contexts. Through meticulous research and thoughtful composition, she crafts visual stories that transcend time, inviting viewers to reflect on the intricate tapestry of identity and heritage.

As you navigate through these images, ask yourself: how often do you see children of color in historical portraiture? And why -or why not- might that be?

About Tokie Rome-Taylor

Interdisciplinary artist Tokie Rome-Taylor explores themes of time, spirituality, visibility and identity through the foundational medium of photography.

Portraiture, set design, and objects all are a part of Tokie’s photographic practice. Through both digital and alternative processes of image making, textiles, and assemblage, she explores the layered complex relationship African Americans in the diaspora have with the western world. 

Rome-Taylor’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with an exhibition record that includes the, The New Gallery at Austin Peay University, The Hammonds House Museum, The Atlanta Contemporary, the Fralin Museum, The Southeastern Museum of Photography, The Griffin Museum of Photography, SP-Foto SP-Arte Fair in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, amongst others.  Her work is held in multiple public  and private collections including  the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, The Fralin Museum at University of Virginia, and  the Southeastern Museum of Photography.

Rome-Taylor is a 20+ year veteran educator and working artist. 

To see more of Tokie’s portfolio log onto her website and find her on Instagram @tokietstudio

Over the past ten years I have been photographing the presidential candidates as they lead rallies, meet with voters and plead for their votes. I started just before the government shutdown in 2013 at a tea party rally at the U.S. Capitol. Politicians railed against the president and the Affordable Care Act — a show to get a sound bite into the next news cycle.

Since then I have followed the political spin as it tilts its way to November. Donald Trump’s entrance into the race, taking control of TV talking heads, making the media his press agent, is true Political Theater.

After a Trump rally in Lowell, Mass., a father said to his sons, “Now that was entertaining.” His sons agreed, chiming in with their favorite lines from Trump’s speech. In New Hampshire after Bernie Sanders gave a speech, he walked down the stage stairs, and when he saw photographers there he stopped and raised an arm in a power salute.

I want to pull back the curtain and show these politicians as they really are. Even though they are in plain sight, they can hide behind words and carefully arranged imagery to project their vision of America. I  am using my camera to cut through the staging of these moments and reveal the cold, naked ambition for power.

About Mark Peterson –

Mark Peterson is a photographer based in New York City. His work has been published in New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Geo Magazine and other national and international publications. In 2018 he was awarded the W. Eugene Smith grant for his work on White Nationalism. He is the author of two books Acts Of Charity published by Powerhouse in 2004 and Political Theatre which was published by Steidl in the fall of 2016.His work is collected in several museums including The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. In 2024 Steidl will published his book The Fourth Wall. 

Mark Peterson’s monograph Political Theatre, published in 2016 by Steidl Verlag Publishing can be found on their website alongside his upcoming book The Past is Never Dead. Find him on Instagram @markpetersonpixs

Arthur Griffin: Winter in Winchester

The Griffin Virtual Gallery – November 9 – December 31, 2023

Happy winter from the Griffin! In honor of the holiday season (and our upcoming Winter Solstice exhibition), we’ve put together this online exhibition spotlighting some of our founder, Arthur Griffin’s works shot in Winchester during the wintertime. Please (virtually) put your hands together for: Winter in Winchester. 

Named after the Black Horse Tavern (that still exists today), the town we now know and love as Winchester started its humble origins as the Black Horse Village, emerging around the Converse Mill Pond. William Parsons Winchester, for whom the town was named, never actually stepped foot in his geological namesake, for he passed away before its incorporation as a town in 1850. Arthur Griffin, the namesake of our museum, on the other hand, had the pleasure of calling Winchester home from 1903 to 2001. 

Since its incorporation, Winchester has grown substantially both in population and in tradition. From the Epiphany’s annual Christmas Fair to Midnight Madness to the Winchester holiday tree lighting celebration to ice boating (depicted in Griffin’s works below), Winchester is full of winter traditions for all to enjoy. 

A winter tradition we hold dear to our hearts at the Griffin is the Winter Solstice Exhibition. This is an annual event where members can submit their own images to be displayed at the museum! (Click here for more information).

Combining some of Arthur’s works, Winter in Winchester captures the history, tradition, and charm of the town. To view more of Arthur Griffin’s works, explore his digital archive here, and in the meantime, take a scroll through past winters in Winchester as you await for this year’s to befall. 

Written and researched By: Candy Li, Fall intern 2023