VIRTUAL EXHIBITION
BRIAN H. PETERSON:
I GIVE MY EYES...Stories + Conversations + Dreams
This virtual exhibition is based on photographic works and writings by Brian H. Peterson.
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #45, 2013
Brian H. Peterson has been an artist, curator, critic, musician, author, videographer, and arts administrator for more than forty years. The recipient of over thirty-five solo exhibitions of his photographs since 1980, his work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum, the Library of Congress, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Denver Art Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Dayton Art Institute, the State Museum of Pennsylvania, the Danforth Museum of Art, the Woodmere Art Museum, the Berman Museum of Art, Haverford College, and the Free Library of Philadelphia. He worked as a curator for 24 years (1990-2013) at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Bucks County, PA, where he organized numerous historical and contemporary exhibits including retrospectives on painters William L. Lathrop (1999), Robert Spencer (2004), and Charles Rosen (2006).
He was the editor and principal author of the landmark 2002 publication Pennsylvania Impressionism (co-published by the Michener and the University of Pennsylvania Press), and his curatorial work included The Painterly Voice: Bucks County’s Fertile Ground (2011-12) and Making Magic: Beauty in Word and image (2012). He ended his museum career as the Michener's Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest Chief Curator.
Peterson's first memoir The Smile at the Heart of Things (2009), was co-published by the Michener and Tell Me Press, and reviewed in USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Trenton Times, and numerous other publications and blogs. His second book, The Blossoming of the World (2011), also was published by Tell Me Press, and a third, I Give My Eyes... (Due Santi Press) was released on April 6, 2018, in conjunction with a solo exhibition at Santa Bannon/ Fine Art, Bethlehem, PA. In the summer of 2018 he exhibited two videos and more than 40 prints in the Michener's major exhibition View Finders: Four Photographic Voices.
Peterson has been a member of the Museums Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, and received two Fellowships for Visual Arts Criticism from the PA Council on the Arts. His critical writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, American Arts Quarterly, American Art Review, Afterimage, The Photo Review, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He was the Founder and Project Director of the Photography Sesquicentennial Project, the Philadelphia-area’s major cooperative celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of photography funded principally by The Pew Charitable Trusts (1988-1990). He taught photography for more than twelve years, at the University of Delaware, the Tyler School of Art, and Swarthmore College. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Delaware (1985), and a Bachelor of Arts (in music composition) from the University of Pennsylvania (1981). Since his retirement in 2014, he has taken up videography while continuing his work as a writer and imagemaker. His 1981 song cycle Moon Songs, based on the poetry of E. E. Cummings, was featured on the CD Modern American Arft Song, recorded by Mezzo-Soprano Sharon Mabry (Albany Records, 2015).
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #4, 2012
I GIVE MY EYES…
“There, there, in that place, on that beach, it happens, it shows itself, a rim of red on the horizon cloud, then the first hint of fire, until finally, oh yes, there it is, there it is.
An unbroken thread of sunlight stretching halfway around the world, flowing back to the endless islands of landless algae floating in primordial seas, algae that turned and twisted and crunched up and congealed into us, you and me, vast conglomerations of cellular flesh desperately searching for water and light and air and earth and a place to live and die.”
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #15, 2014
© Brian H. Peterson, Earth Music #31, 1993-94
© Brian H. Peterson, Earth and Sky #13, 2005
© Brian H. Peterson, from...to #1, 1993-94
© Brian H. Peterson, Earth Music #26, 1993-94
© Brian H. Peterson, I Saw This #13, 2010
© Brian H. Peterson, I Saw This #34, 2016
“Beauty is not a vacation from reality. It is reality.”
© Brian H. Peterson, I Sing the Body #25, 2007
© Brian H. Peterson, I Song the Body #2, 2006
© Brian H. Peterson, Interior Light #5, 2003
© Brian H. Peterson, Interior Light #12, 2003
© Brian H. Peterson, Rock Forms #9, 1987
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #6, 2011
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #9, 2011
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #16, 2014
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #22, 2013
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #42, 2014
© Brian H. Peterson, Trees, Stones, Water and Light #1, 1979
© Brian H. Peterson, Trees, Stones, Water and Light #11, 1980
© Brian H. Peterson, Water Music #22, 1995
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #46, 2015
“I want to know what it’s like to be the whole me, not the ‘me’ in parts and pieces. But I also want to know more about those deeper currents of flowing magma that push along the tectonic plates of the soul, forming and reforming mountain ranges and ocean trenches, piling continent up landmass, slowly creating and re-creating the foundation and structure and superstructure of a single insignificant conscious entity: me.”
PUBLICATION
PRESS
© Brian H. Peterson, Sea of Light #42, 2014
LEGACY PLANNING FOR ARTISTS
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