Exhibitions

This exhibition explores the rich and varied career of Ann Zane Shanks, a Brooklyn-born photographer who has brought her considerable artistic and entrepreneurial gifts to photojournalism, publishing, television and theater. Shanks' early commissioned work for public housing authorities and libraries sent her to document poor communities along the East Coast, yielding some of her most enduring images. This retrospective exhibition of 75 photographic prints, previously seen at the New-York Historical Society, covers several themes of Shanks work from the 1950s through the 1970s' life in America, changing times, travel and celebrity portraits. Her first film, Central Park (1970), an independent short acquired by Columbia Pictures, will be on continuous view, along with some of the original books and magazines in which her work appeared. The exhibition is organized by guest curator Bonnie Yochelson, whose previous exhibitions include Berenice Abbott's Changing New York, 1935-1939 (Museum of the City of New York, 1998). A catalog featuring 55 of Shanks' photographs entitled Ann Zane Shanks&Photography accompanies the exhibition and is available in the Museum Shop.