Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Lecture: LaToya Ruby Frazier

FREE • Seating is limited

LaToya Ruby Frazier, a contemporary Chicago-based photographer and the 2017 recipient of the Akron Art Museum’s Knight Purchase Award, will visit Akron to present the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Lecture at the Akron Art Museum.

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For Frazier, art is a catalyst for social justice. Her photographs and videos document America today: post-industrial cities riven by poverty, racism, healthcare inequality and environmental toxicity. Bridging personal realities with broader social issues, her haunting artworks amplify the voices of the most vulnerable and transform our sense of place and self. Frazier’s first book, The Notion of Family, received the International Center for Photography Infinity Award. Frazier has received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally.

Born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier holds a BFA in applied media arts from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in art photography from Syracuse University. She has studied under the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program and is Associate Professor of Photography, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Two of LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photographs are currently on view in Family at the Akron Art Museum through August 20, 2017.

Frazier’s photographs will be acquired for the Akron Art Museum collection as part of the 2017 Knight Purchase Award. Details regarding which photographs will be added are coming soon.

The Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Lecture is an annual guest lectureship in photography and photographic media that includes significant time to workshop with or critique work of University of Akron Mary Schiller Myers School of Art students. The lecture is held at the Akron Art Museum and is free and open to the public.