Virtual | Curatorial Perspective – “Craft and Camera: The Art of Nancy Ford Cones” with Rebekah Beaulieu & Pepper Stetler

2pm PST / 3pm MST / 4pm CST / 5pm EST

Please join us for a virtual discussion of Craft and Camera: The Art of Nancy Ford Cones, with ArtTable member Rebekah Beaulieu, Louise Taft Semple President & CEO of the Taft Museum of Art, and Pepper Stetler, Guest Curator and Associate Professor of Art History at Miami University’s College of Creative Arts.

On a small riverside farm in Loveland, Ohio, Nancy Ford Cones created photographs that earned her a national reputation during a time when female artists continued to struggle for recognition. Despite the praise they received during her lifetime, Cones’s imaginative and exquisitely crafted works were largely forgotten after her death. This exhibition resurrects the gifted artist’s career and contributions to the field of photography.

Between about 1900 and 1939, Cones made thousands of photographs that featured country life, fantastical visions, and literary characters. To create her images, she employed the help of neighbors, friends, and family who posed in costume around the farm and its environs. Working in partnership with her husband James, who printed her work using a variety of techniques and papers, Cones conceived evocative subjects that emulated 19th-century European paintings.

Nancy Ford Cones’s photographs were published in prestigious journals such as Camera Craft, as well as in popular outlets that included National Geographic magazine and Kodak advertisements. The first major presentation of her work, this exhibition and its accompanying catalog will demonstrate that she was an exceptional artist who rivaled the top photographers of her time.

Admission:

• ArtTable Circle Members – Free
• All Other ArtTable Members – $10
• General Public – $15

Not a member? Join today!

After registration, you will receive an email containing the Zoom link.
All virtual programs offer live automatic closed captioning.

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About Rebekah Beaulieu

Rebekah “Becky” Beaulieu, Ph.D. is the Louise Taft Semple President/CEO of the Taft Museum of Art. She previously served as the Director of the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut and as Associate Director of the Bowdoin College of Art in Brunswick, Maine.

Becky is the author of Financial Fundamentals for Historic House Museums (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), co-editor of The State of Museums: Voices from the Field (MuseumsEtc., 2018), and author of the newly published Endowment Essentials for Museums (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). She holds an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and in Arts Administration from Columbia University; she earned her Ph.D. in American and New England Studies from Boston University. Becky also serves as an American Association of Museums’ Accreditation Commissioner, Treasurer of the American Association for State and Local History, and as editor of the American Association of State and Local History book series for Rowman & Littlefield.

About Pepper Stetler

Pepper Stetler, Associate Professor of Art History, received her B.A. from Barnard College (2001) and her M.A. and Ph.D. (2004, 2009) in Art History from the University of Delaware.

Professor Stetler’s research focuses on the art and visual culture of early twentieth-century Europe. Her book Stop Reading! Look!: Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2015, provides a new perspective on the prominence of photography in Germany Weimar Republic (1918-1933). It addresses how the display and sequencing of photographs in books relates to contemporary debates on modern visual experiences. Photographic books by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Karl Blossfeldt, Helmar Lerski, and August Sander figure prominently in her research.

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Image: Nancy Ford Cones (American, 1869–1962), Mama’s Kodak, about 1912, gelatin silver print, 6 x 4 3/8 in. Collection of W. Roger and Patricia K. Fry