Guest Lecturer Dr. Mary Panzer presents

Patrons of the New Art: Photography in American Magazines, 1945-1955

Dr. Mary Panzer will focus on fine art photography in American magazines such as Fortune, LIFE, LOOK, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. Her lecture will include photographers represented in Legends in Photography: Major Works from the Museum’s Collection.

For nearly eight years, Dr. Panzer served as Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. She is now an Exhibition Consultant at Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation and Curator and Consultant for Exhibition Art & Technology. She has advised the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and other institutions. She has a special interest in American photography and photojournalism.

Dr. Panzer curated a number of important exhibitions at the Portrait Gallery: Mathew Brady: Images as History, Photography as Art, Philippe Halsman: A Retrospective, and Tête à Tête: Portraits by Henri Cartier-Bresson, among them. Her book, Mathew Brady and the Image of History, is one of the most illuminating studies ever published on the Civil War-era photographer. Brady also produced portraits of 18 American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln.

Another major project, Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context since 1955, was named the 2006 Photography Book of the Year by the International Center of Photography in New York. She has also written books on Brady and Lewis Hine for Phaidon Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in academic journals, leading photography publications like Aperture, and the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune.

Her approach is expansive. She is known for eloquently explaining the historical and cultural currents reflected in photography. She has been Curator of Photographs at the Spencer Museum of Art and Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas. She has also taught at New York University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Dr. Panzer holds her B.A. in English from Yale University, her M.A. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in American and New England studies from Boston University. Over the years, she has received many fellowships, grants, and awards for her research and scholarship.

$8 admission for members, $15 for general public, includes admission
to the Permanent Collection. Lecture fees will be used to acquire works for the Museum of Fine Arts’ permanent collection.