Featured Exhibition

Images of the Great Depression in Ohio: Documentary Portraits Revisted
December 10 - February 18, 2011
Opening Reception and Panel Discussion: Saturday, December 10, 1 - 4 pm

The special exhibition, Images of the Great Depression in Ohio: Documentary Portraits Revisited, features photographs made by Farm Security Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and Works Projects Administration artists during the 1930s and images of those same sites today. The exhibition is part of a larger Ohio Humanities Council project to help Ohioans explore the legacy of the Great Depression and the New Deal.  The exhibition was curated by Andrew Hershberger, Bowling Green State University, and Patricia Williamsen, Executive Director, Ohio Humanities Council.

Beginning with the stock market crash in 1929, the decade of the Great Depression introduced an era of unprecedented change in American communities.  As families struggled to stay together and local government struggled to care for their communities, Roosevelt’s New Deal brought sweeping changes to the landscape of Ohio and to expectations for a better life.

It was also an era in which documentary photography influenced how Americans thought and felt about themselves, their communities, and their hopes for the future.  Roosevelt and his New Deal Administrators understood the power of photography to influence public opinion, federal legislation, and the nation’s recovery. The Farm Security Administration (FSA), which later fed into the Office of War Information (OWI,) sent professional photographers such as Arthur Rothstein, Carl Mydans, John Vachon, and Ben Shahn to document rural and small town life and the effects of the Great Depression.

In 2009, the Ohio Humanities Council commissioned a rephotographic survey of Ohio sites photographed by FDR’s documentarians in the 1930s.  The rephotographic survey was undertaken by a team of award-winning photographers: Ardine Nelson, Ohio State University; Fredrik Marsh; Sean Hughes, University of Cincinnati; Helen Hoffelt, Columbus College of Art & Design; Joel Whitaker, University of Dayton; Lynn Whitney, Bowling Green State University. The communities they visited for rephotographic work included Buckeye Lake, Cincinnati, Circleville, Columbus, Greenhills, Lancaster, Newark, Plain City, Somerset, Waterville, and Urbana.

Ben Shahn, Main Street, London, 1938	Ardine Nelson, Main Street, London, 2010
Ben Shahn, Buckeye Lake, London, 1938	Helen Hoffelt , Buckeye Lake , 2010

Ardine Nelson is a professor in the Department of Art's Photography program at Ohio State University and is the recipient of Ohio Arts Council, Greater Columbus Art Council, and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships.  Fredrik Marsh teaches in the Art Department at the Ohio State University and has received Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, Greater Columbus Arts Council, State of Saxony (Germany) Ministry of Science and Art and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. 

Images of the Great Depression in Ohio: Documentary Portraits Revisited was funded by grants from the We the People initiative at the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ohio Arts Council, the Thomas R. Schiff Fund at the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, and Epson America, Inc.

The Ohio Humanities Council, a state-based partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, supports public programs to help Ohioans connect what they learn with the way they live.  For more information, visit the Ohio Humanities Council at www.ohiohumanities.org.  Through a grant award from the Ohio Humanities Council, the exhibition, panel discussion, and reception will be free and open to the public.

Two new installations complement the exhibition.  These are a selection of 1930s photographs of Zanesville by Dr. Harry W. Taylor, and a group of rare Federal Art Project ceramic sculptures made in Cleveland in the 1930s on loan from a private collection.

The Zanesville Museum of Art is located at 620 Military Road. The hours of operation are Wednesday, Friday, Saturday 10:00 - 5:00 PM, Thursday 10:00 - 7:30 PM. Closed Sunday - Tuesday. For more information call (740) 452-0741.