The Museum of Photographic Arts at The San Diego Museum of Art welcomes three new photography exhibitions this spring: Picture This: Recent Acquisitions, Storyteller: Work by Holly Roberts, and The Artist Speaks: Cara Romero.
Picture This: Recent Acquisitions (open now through August 4, 2024)
The works on view have been selected from over a thousand photographs received as gifts to the Museum of Photographic Arts and The San Diego Museum of Art collections in the last three years, culminating with the merger of the Museum of Photographic Arts and The San Diego Museum of Art. The combined photographic art collection now contains over fifteen thousand works spanning mediums such as photography, video, and new media. This exhibition showcases a variety of important themes and genres, including Portraiture, Abstraction/Manipulation, and Modernism. Guests have the opportunity to view works from renowned photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Martín Chambi, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Mary Ellen Mark, Arnold Newman, Alison Rossiter, Aaron Siskind, Mike and Doug Starn, and many more.
Storyteller: Work by Holly Roberts (open now through August 18, 2024)
With a strong connection to nature, both human and animal, Holly Roberts (American, b. 1951) has explored her rich and varied inner world. She was an early experimenter in mixing paint and photography, transforming shapes, and applying textured surfaces, and she remains a force in expanding the medium of photography. Driven by inner terrors, Roberts’ art is a symbolic reflection of her life and the imperfections in the world around her.
The Artist Speaks: Cara Romero (April 27 – October 20, 2024)
Cara Romero is an enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe and was raised between the contrasting settings of the reservation in the Mojave Desert, California, and the urban sprawl of Houston, Texas. She draws inspiration from her individual identity and employs a distinct approach to representing cultural memory, history, and lived experiences. She combines theatrical compositions with dramatic color, applying her research on traditional and contemporary narratives of heritage to depict the modernity of Indigenous culture, as well as to illuminate the presence of the supernatural in everyday life. Romero is the seventh recipient of the Lou Stoumen Prize in Photography. The Lou Stoumen Prize in Photography is awarded by the Museum to a mid-career photographer whose work relates in spirit to Stoumen’s own humanistic approach to photography. Guests will experience this exhibition, one of Romero’s first solo museum shows, in three sections titled Native California, Imagining Indigenous Futures, and Native Women.
“We’re excited to welcome these three unique photography exhibitions to MOPA@SDMA,” says Anita Feldman, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at The San Diego Museum of Art. “These impressive exhibitions, initiated by Deborah Klochko, former Director of the Museum of Photographic Arts, offer something for everyone.”
“We are proud to continue bringing new works to the San Diego community that shed light on different cultures, experiences, and ways of viewing life, both present and past,” shares Roxana Velásquez, Executive Director and CEO at The San Diego Museum of Art. “We are also pleased to welcome Kara Felt, Ph.D., who recently joined the Museum as the Lawrence S. Friedman Curator of Photography.”
