Stanford, Calif. — The first major museum retrospective devoted to contemporary artist Carrie Mae Weems—widely acclaimed as one of today’s most eloquent and respected interpreters of the African American experience—opens October 16 at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. More than 100 intellectually challenging and aesthetically compelling photographs, installations and videos offer an unprecedented survey of Weems’s 30-year exploration of the universal human journey, especially as affected by race, gender and class. Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video remains on view at the Cantor until January 5, 2014. It then continues its national tour and moves to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Comprehensive in scope, the exhibition traces the evolution of Weems’s career from her early documentary and autobiographical photographic series to the more conceptual and philosophically complex works that have placed her in the forefront of contemporary art. Major themes that have engaged Weems are all included—personal narrative, the legacy and locales of slavery, contemporary perceptions of African Americans and the universal struggle for equality.