For immediate useNov. 4, 1997 -- No. 819

Ackland to display early photographs, European depictions of other regions

CHAPEL HILL -- “A Second is a Long Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton” and “Seeing the Strange: European Artists and Exotic Worlds” will be two new exhibitions displayed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Ackland Art Museum from Nov. 8 through Jan. 25.

“A Second is a Long Time” will feature photographs from the 1930s to 1970s that highlight the scientific inventiveness of the man who invented the electronic flash.

“Seeing the Strange” includes prints and drawings from the 16th to the 19th century that show how European artists depicted, interpreted and appropriated the life, art and culture of other regions of the world.

Both exhibitions are from the museum's permanent collection.

Programs relating to the second exhibition will include three free public talks by UNC-CH art history graduate students on Nov. 16, Nov. 23 and Dec. 3.

“A Second is a Long Time” features 17 photographs donated to the Ackland in 1996 by the Harold and Esther Edgerton Family Foundation. The works illustrate Edgerton's ingenuity in capturing motion on film.

In the early 20th century, speed of a mechanical camera shutter was limited; a very brief exposure required intense light to produce an image on film. In the 1930s, Edgerton solved both problems when he invented the electronic flash, an intense light that could be as brief as a millionth of a second.

Edgerton could open his camera shutter in darkness and let his flash take the picture. With a rapid series of flashes, he could record successive stages of the same event on a single negative. For instance, his multiple exposure of a golf club catches it 39 times during one swing.

“Seeing the Strange” combines works of art from the museum's collection with illustrated books from the Rare Book Collection of UNC-CH's Wilson Library.

Beginning with the monstrous beings shown in the “Nuremberg Chronicle,” a history of the world published in 1493, the exhibition shows European reactions to real or imagined inhabitants of other continents. While traveling artists produced more or less accurate documentation of other cultures, others who never left Europe produced fanciful pictures based on written accounts. The inhabitants of Asia, Africa and America tended to be seen as aberrations of the inhabitants of Europe, but they were fascinating in their unfamiliarity and sometimes used as a tool for analyzing or criticizing European society.

“Seeing the Strange” is presented in conjunction with the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies at UNC-CH and its faculty sponsors, Dr. Mary Sheriff of the UNC-CH art department and Dr. James Thompson of the English department.

The three talks related to the exhibit, all at the Ackland, will begin with “When Jesus Met Africa: The Magi as Personifications of the Three Parts of the World,” at 3 p.m. Nov. 16. UNC-CH graduate student David Hart will examine Hendrick Goltzius' “Adoration of the Magi” for the relationship between the rise of images of the Magus Balthazar, depicted as a black man, and Europe's early encounters with Africa through exploration and trade in the 15th and 16th centuries.

In “A Passion for Porcelain,” at 3 p.m. Nov. 23, graduate student Nancy Polo will look at Chinese export porcelains depicting European-style hunting and landscape scenes. She will discuss the popularity of export porcelain and what it suggests about commodities representing cultures Europeans considered exotic.

In “Dangerous Sympathies: John Gabriel Stedman's Illustrated Recollections of the Violence of Colonial Slavery in 18th-Century Dutch Surinam,” at 12:15 p.m. Dec. 3, Susanna Williams will analyze conflicting views of slavery presented in Stedman's romanticized reminiscence of his travels. Stedman expressed a deep sympathy for and an underlying imperialistic attitude toward slaves in Dutch Surinam.

The Ackland is on South Columbia Street near Franklin Street. Hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Call the Ackland at (919) 966-5736 (museum office) or (919) 962-0837 (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf).

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Ackland contact: Chris Canfield, 966-5736

News Services contact: Laura J. Toler