Contact: Whitney Hale

Carrie Mae Weems

Weems’ piece “The Armstrong Triptych,” from “The Hampton Project"

The lecture series is sponsored by the Robert C. May Photography Endowment, a UK Art Museum fund established in 1994 for the support of acquisitions and programs relating to photography.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 21, 2005) -- Internationally renowned artist and photographer Carrie Mae Weems will spend an afternoon in Lexington as part of events sponsored by the University of Kentucky Art Museum and the 2005 Kentucky Women Writers Conference.

Weems will be the final speaker of the 2004-05 Robert C. May Photography Endowment Lecture Series at 4 p.m. Friday, March 25, in the Recital Hall of the Singletary Center for the Arts. Weems’ appearance in the series is in conjunction with events scheduled for the Women Writers Conference at UK that also include a reception and an exhibit downtown.

Weems has presented her photographs, installations and videos worldwide, including exhibits at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

With both reverence and daring, Carrie Mae Weems challenges the conventions of photography and how those conventions shape attitudes toward race, gender and identity. Her first major series, “ Family Pictures and Stories,” is a personal and political examination of how the representation of African Americans in documentary photographs has shaped our perceptions of race.

Another series, “ And 22 Million Very Angry and Tired People,” exposes the conventions of the documentary style of Farm Security Administration photographers by adding textual interpretation to the images. In “ From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” Weems questions the narrative found in traditional portraiture of daguerreotypes, tintypes and ambrotypes.

Recent works continue to dispute the assumption of “photographic truth.” In “ The Hampton Project,” Weems combines archival images from the Hampton Institute in

Virginia with poetry and prose from writers and theorists to provide a biting commentary on the college’s mission to assimilate African and Native Americans.

Throughout her career, Weems has forced viewers to re-examine the history and role of photography in America. Weems, a native of Portland, Ore., earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego. She has received several awards, including a grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Weems has done numerous artist residencies, including ones at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is featured in several publications, including “Carrie Mae Weems: Recent Work, 1992-98” and “In Real Life: Six Women Photographers.” Weems currently resides in Syracuse, N.Y.

The lecture series is sponsored by the Robert C. May Photography Endowment, a UK Art Museum fund established in 1994 for the support of acquisitions and programs relating to photography. The 2004-05 May Lecture Series is in the program's eighth year and has featured photographers Paul Berger, Robert Fichter, Joel Sternfeld, as well as Carrie Mae Weems.

As part of her visit, Weems will also take part in the Nell Stuart Donovan Exhibit Series presented by the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. The exhibit takes a look at the sometimes surprising relationship between the visual arts and the narrative form. Annually, the Donovan Exhibit Series sponsors a one-woman show by a world-class artist. Weems’ participation will include an exhibition of her works and a reception for the artist at 5 p.m. March 25 at the Ann Tower Gallery. The Donovan Exhibit Series is made possible by grants from Donovan Trust and the Kentucky Arts Council.

All the events are free and open to the public, as well as Kentucky Women Writers Conference registrants. For more information on the May Lecture or the UK Art Museum, please call (859) 257-5716 or visit the Web site. For more information on the Donovan Exhibit Series or the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, please call (859) 257-6420 or visit the Web site.