Exhibitions

Maggie Sherwood, Floating Foundation of Photography
docked at Kingston, 1980

....Photographer Maggie Sherwood’s circle included notables such as W. Eugene Smith, Lisette Model, Arthur Tress, Lilo Raymond, and David Vestal. In 1969 she impulsively bought a houseboat, and renovated it to include a space where she could stage photography shows—there were very few other places that “art photography” could be seen on a regular basis at the time—founding a regular program of group shows that began to receive significant critical attention. Her son Steven Schoen soon began a series of innovative educational programs, teaching photography to inmates in prisons, mental institutions, and other out-of-the ordinary locations. Over time, the big ideas hatched on this little houseboat became the Floating Foundation of Photography, an organization that continues its work today.



David Vestal, Flatiron Building, 1963.............................................. A. Tress, Bride and Groom, 1971

.....The exhibition, curated by Beth E. Wilson, visual arts editor for Chronogram magazine and lecturer in New Paltz’s Art History department, features a comprehensive survey of work from the Floating Foundation’s collections, including work by both well- and under-known photographers, much of it vividly documenting the turbulent era of the 1970s and early 1980s. From quirky-yet-quintessential images of New York City and its denizens, to classic images by photographers like Neil Slavin, Weegee, James Van Der Zee, and others, the exhibition critically re-examines this unique era of our history, reconnecting the historical and political context of the era with the range of photographic aesthetics within which it was developed. With these photographs, alongside key images by Maggie Sherwood and a selection of outstanding work produced in the Foundation’s many programs, the exhibition explores the energy and audacity of Sherwood and her circle as they invented a uniquely subversive course for the dissemination and use of photography at a key moment in its recent history.

James Van Der Zee, Untitled, n.d....Phil Dante, Untitled, n.d