Alumna Alissa Schapiro, of the Department of Art History, has been awarded the 2021 Alfred H. Barr Award for museum publication of the year for her co-curation of the “LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography” exhibit. The exhibit investigates the pictures published in the magazine from 1936 to 1972 and how they represented both American and global society of the time.
Schapiro, a grad student of the Department of Art History, researches modernist American art published during World War II and the Cold War. She studies the effect the wars had on artists of the time, their media, and the subjects of their work. The “LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography” exhibit allowed Schapiro to use her expertise to help organize a visual representation of the art of the time.
According to the College Art Association of America, which gives out the award annually,
The Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship was established in 1980, in honor of the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art and a scholar of early-twentieth-century painting. This award is presented to the author or authors of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published in the English language under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. Catalogues of public or private collections or significant portions thereof and exhibition catalogues are eligible.
See Schapiro’s co-curated exhibit “LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography.”