Office of Public Relations

Pomona, NJ 08240

 

 

Stockton Art Gallery to Open Its Fall 2006 Exhibition Season.

 

For Immediate Release

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

 

Contact: Tim Kelly

Stockton Public Relations

(609) 652-4950

 

Jessica Hudson

(609) 652-4524

 

GALLOWAY TWP., NJ The Stockton Art Gallery opens its Fall 2006 Exhibition Season with recent photographs by Wendel A. White, Professor of Art. This exhibit will be on display from September 18 through October 14 in Room H-113. The exhibition, Pictures from a New World: An African American Village in Israel, includes photographs taken in the African Hebrew Israelite communities of Dimona and Arad Israel. These communities were established more than 35 years ago by a group of African Americans from the Chicago area. They left the U.S. in 1967, lived in Liberia for more than two years, and settled in Israels Negev Desert. Images in this portfolio describe various aspects of daily life in the community: portraits, business, education, architecture, healthcare, music, and play.

 

Extensions of Whites earlier works, Small Towns, Black Lives: African American Communities in Southern New Jersey and Schools for the Colored: Up-South, Between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, these photos address the historical traditions of African American communities. The photographs are a continuing chronicle of the various iterations of the concept of community and identity for African Americans.

 

A panel discussion, Redefining Community and Identity: The African Hebrew Israelite Village, will be held in the Townsend Residential Life Center (TRLC) on Thursday, September 28^th from 3 to 5 pm. The discussion followed by a reception in the Stockton Art Gallery in Room H-113 from 5 to 6pm.

 

The panelists include William E. Williams, Professor of Fine Art and Curator of Photography at Haverford College; Dr. Joseph Rubenstein, Professor of Anthropology at Stockton College; Dr. Aaron Krauss, Visiting Specialist in Jewish Studies at Stockton College and Wendel A. White Professor of Art here at Stockton College.

 

William E. Williams

 

William E. Williams is Professor of Fine Arts and Curator of Photography at Haverford College in Haverford, PA. His photographs have been widely exhibited and are in many public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Baltimore Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian. As curator Williams has organized over eighty exhibitions in twenty-five years, including work by Lewis Hine, Diane Arbus, and Walker Evans. Williams work was recognized when he became a 1997 Pew Fellow in the Arts and a 2003-04 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. According to Mr. Williams Whites recent portraits fit into the larger context that includes African American history, culture and identity. The history of portraiture of African Americans in this country is deeply connected to the identity of the individual sitter and the state of race relations when the portrait was taken. Williams will support his comments on the panel with slides showing portraits of black people both famous and anonymous from the 19^th century to the 20^th century.

 

Dr. Joseph Rubenstein

 

Dr. Joseph Rubenstein is a Professor of Anthropology at Stockton and has conducted fieldwork in Nigeria, Belize, and Italy specializing in ritual performance and celebration. Professor Rubenstein has taught courses in the Africana and Jewish Studies Programs focusing on the process of ethnic and multicultural identity construction.

 

Dr. Aaron Krauss

 

Dr. Aaron Krauss has served as Rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in Margate, at the Community Synagogue in Atlantic City, at the Princeton Jewish Center, and as Navy Chaplain. Dr. Krauss serves Stockton as a Visiting Specialist in Jewish Studies and also teaches courses on politics in the Middle East. As a prominent community leader in South Jersey, he played an instrumental role in the establishment of the College.

 

Wendel A. White

 

The exhibiting artist Wendel A. White, is currently Professor of Art at Stockton. He has received various awards and fellowships including the 1995 New Jersey Council for the Arts Fellowship, the 2003 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Photography, and the 2005 Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts grant to support the Schools for the Colored project. Mr. Whites work has been included in many museums and collections including individual and group exhibitions and publications. In January 2003 the Noyes Museum of Art mounted a retrospective exhibition of the Small Towns, Black Lives project that included 13 years of the images and an exhibition catalogue of the same title. That exhibition will continue to travel to various venues through December 2006.

 

Special Stockton College Art Gallery Hours for this exhibition (Room H-113):

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: 11:30am-4pm

Tuesday: 11:30am-8pm

Saturday and Sunday: 12pm-4pm

 

For more information, contact Denise McGarvey at (609) 652-4566 or denise.mcgarvey@stockton.edu.

 

 

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