Arts & Entertainment

Michener Museum Reopens With New Photo Exhibition

The Michener Art Museum has reopened to the public with a new photography exhibit featuring local and regional artists.

Peter Blanchard's profile picture
Peter Blanchard, Patch StaffVerified Patch Staff Badge
Various photographs on display at the Michener Art Museum.
Various photographs on display at the Michener Art Museum. (Peter Blanchard/Patch)

DOYLESTOWN, PA — The Michener Art Museum has reopened to the public with a new photography exhibition featuring artists in the Delaware Valley region.

On view through August 15, Through the Lens: Modern Photography in the Delaware Valley explores nearly 70 years of artistic experimentations with photographic processes and subject matter by local and regional artists.

The exhibition is organized through the themes of form, figure, landscape, and community and social and political activism, highlighting more than 100 photographs by nearly 40 artists.

Find out what's happening in Doylestownfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

Over the course of a month in 1998, photographer Edmund Eckstein was granted access to Doylestown Hospital to produce a photographic series commissioned by the Michener Art Museum.
In this aerial view of Doylestown taken by Maynard Clark, the large building at the top center enclosed by a formidable wall is the Bucks County Prison , now the home of the Michener Art Museum. Clark, the son of photographers, journalists and preservationists Harold Hewitt Clark and Sara Maynard Clark, became interested in aerial photography after his service in World War II as a flight officer with the US Air Force.
Jack Rosen's aerial view shows the sprawling uniformity of Levittown's individual lots prior to construction, with houses marked by their concrete foundations. While the planned community offered affordable, single-family homes to consumers, the developers' racially discriminatory practices resulted in an entirely white suburb. Rosen documented this controversy, and when it became national news, the public outcry helped to pressure lawmakers to pass a fair housing law in Pennsylvania a year later.

Other represented photographers include Tom Baril, Paula Chamlee, Edmund Eckstein, Susan Fenton, David Graham, Diane Levell, Martha Madigan, Ray Metzger, Tim Portlock, Jack Rosen, Thomas Shillea and Michael A. Smith.

Like what you're reading? Sign up to get daily Patch emails and stay in the know on local news: https://patch.com/subscribe

Find out what's happening in Doylestownfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

More from Doylestown