VCP is proud to announce its 2nd annual Open Juried Exhibition with our guest juror Karen Haas, who has selected 40 photographs from artists nation wide for display in VCP’s gallery from March 3 – April 2, 2017.

A limited edition exhibition catalog will be produced in conjunction with the exhibition featuring all selected works.

Accepted Work Due at VCP…………Sat, February 25, 2017
Opening Reception………………………Friday, March 3rd  –  5:30 to 8:30pm
Exhibition Dates…………………………..March 3 – April 2, 2017

Juror:  Karen Haas has been the Lane Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since 2001, where she is responsible for a large collection of photographs by American modernists, Charles Sheeler, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Imogen Cunningham. The Lane Collection, which has recently been given to the Museum, numbers more than 6,000 prints and ranges across the entire history of western photography. Before coming to the MFA, she received her MA from Boston University and held various curatorial positions in museums and private collections, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the BU Art Gallery, and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover. Her recent activities include exhibitions, such as Imogen Cunningham: In Focus; Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott; Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass; and Bruce Davidson: East 100^th Street; and publications, such as An Enduring Vision: Photographs from the Lane Collection; Common Wealth: Art by African Americans in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Ansel Adams; and The Photography of Charles Sheeler: American Modernist.

Juror’s Statement: “Thank you so much to Joshua Farr for inviting me to participate in this year’s Open Juried Exhibition and to all the artists who submitted work. It is always an honor to be asked to jury a show, especially for a place like the Vermont Center for Photography where the programming and exhibitions are so consistently strong. Yet, as you can imagine, the job of juror comes with its own special challenges and at times I feel like I’m stepping out on a tightrope without a net. The biggest hurdle, of course, is the volume—so much good work and so little time—and the fact that one’s first introduction to a person’s photography comes via jpeg on a computer. Those small glowing pictures on the screen often do not do justice to the final product and it is sometimes quite startling to finally encounter the “real thing” in the gallery, because it has a very different scale or print quality than I had visualized. A few familiar “faces” jump out at me each time I do this, but mostly I like to judge an image not knowing whom it’s by or where it’s from, and, as a result, I constantly discover new work to follow.

In the end, the challenges of the process are greatly outweighed by the thrill of simply looking and that is really why many of us feel so lucky to be curators. Over the course of jurying, the tightrope walk is rapidly transformed into something more like a treasure hunt and I am always excited by the depth and variety of work before me. In this case, I was also impressed by the broad range of subjects submitted—from portraits to landscapes, nature to city views, and staged tableaux to abstractions. Narrowing the show down to the final forty pieces was made somewhat easier, because I limited my choices to one photograph per chosen artist, and I favored work that had a consistency of vision across all five submissions and drew me back to look again and again.

Thanks to all of you who sent in your photographs for consideration. This was my great pleasure and I hope to meet many of you in person in the future.”
– Karen E. Haas
Lane Curator of Photographs, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Juror’s Choice Award: Susan Keiser

Selections: