Today, Carnegie Museum of Art announced that Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape, will be on view from May 11, 2024, to January 12, 2025, in the museum’s Heinz Galleries. The following month, a podcast amplifying the voices of artists, writers, and scholars will debut, with its host being tennis champion and arts advocate Venus Williams.
The 6-episode podcast series launching June 26, 2024, features 20 notable figures such as A.K. Burns, Raven Chacon, Dionne Lee, Xaviera Simmons, and Sky Hopkina. Podcast contributors will address questions of colonial legacies, memorial charged landscapes, human adaptability and complicity, and environmental anxiety, foregrounding narratives and people that are often overlooked or excluded from conversations about the landscape.
“I’m honored to partner with Carnegie Museum of Art on Widening the Lens, a deeply meaningful project that integrates art, environment and intentional storytelling,” says Venus Williams. “The participating artists and thinkers you’ll hear on the Widening the Lens podcast reflect diverse, global perspectives and a vast range of backgrounds and experiences; I am proud to help amplify their voices as they prompt us to consider new and alternative ways of relating to our landscapes through photography.”
The synergistic partnership between Carnegie Museum of Art and Williams came to fruition through a mutual interest in increasing access to art, engaging new and diverse perspectives, and provoking discussion around the exhibition’s timely, critical themes. Williams, an avid collector of contemporary art with a particular interest in promoting and preserving the legacies of artists of color, was drawn to the partnership as an opportunity to expand her knowledge of the photographic medium and engage a wide array of audiences who might not otherwise interact with a museum.
In addition to the podcast series, the project consists of an expansive exhibition bringing together nearly 100 works by 19 artists, an extensive suite of public programming, and a fully illustrated publication, offering visitors multiple points of entry into the American landscape. Proving to be one of the most significant surveys of contemporary photography presented this year, the exhibition—and wider project—is part of the latest iteration of the museum’s celebrated Hillman Photography Initiative, an ongoing series that invites audiences to experience new ideas about art and photography.
“The project explicitly looks at how the camera can act as a tool to question inherited narratives about people and ecology, and foreground stories that are often overlooked or excluded,” says Dan Leers, Curator of Photography at Carnegie Museum of Art. “We are thrilled to bring together many artists and thinkers who have catalyzed their creative agency to ask challenging questions and envision possible futures.”
A range of public programs begins on Saturday, May 11, 2024, activating the project within and beyond the museum. Visitors are invited to join artists, ecologists, and poets to locate themselves and their histories within the space.
For additional details on programming and events, please visit carnegieart.org.
