New Art Exhibit “Ansel Adams: Manzanar” on Display at Schmucker Art Gallery

Posted By Gettysburgian Staff on Feb 17, 2024 | 1 comment

The Ansel Adams: Manzanar exhibition has been curated by Emma Wylam ’24 and Sophia Crawford ’24. (Photo William Oehler/The Gettysburgian)

By Leah Nath, Staff Writer

A staple feature of Gettysburg College’s campus, the Schmucker Art Gallery, has opened its first exhibition of 2024—Ansel Adams: Manzanar. Each year the gallery displays eight to ten different exhibitions, highlighting the college’s visual arts program with the intention of deepening the community’s exposure to diverse perspectives and art. The current Schmucker Art Gallery Director Sarah Kate Gillespie is an experienced art curator and Professor of Art History at Gettysburg College, bringing her talents and expertise to the gallery exhibitions.

The Ansel Adams: Manzanar exhibition has been curated by Emma Wylam ’24 and Sophia Crawford ’24. Wylam is an art studio and history double major with minors in art history and public history, and Crawford is a history major with minors in Civil War era studies and public history. Their exhibition displays fifty prints from American photographer Ansel Adams, who died in 1984 at the age of 82.

In 1943, Adams used his skills in photography to document the Inyo, California Manzanar War Relocation Center. He published some of these photos in his book, “Born Free and Equal,” in 1944, but due to the controversial nature of his photograph’s subjects, the book had very limited circulation. At the tail end of World War II, Manzanar held more than 120,000 Japanese American inmates within the concentration camp. Interestingly, many explanations of the camp refer to the inmates as “interns,” and Adams’ original intention for photographing the center was to show the loyalty such “interns” were presenting.

Gillespie’s write-up for the exhibition mentions that Adams had previously made a career on landscape photography, but his political and aesthetic departure from his familiar photography was put to use to display the emotions surrounding Manzanar and to preserve the history of such an infamous decision in America’s history.

In their curation of Adams’ photography, Wylam and Crawford chose to sort through his prints by categories of topic. Different walls of the gallery show portraits of the center in themes such as People, Family, Labor, Agriculture and Social Life. Through all black-and-white prints, Adams reveals the stark truth of the camp’s reality.

In 1965, Adams offered his photos to the Library of Congress, when he is quoted as saying, “The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.” The Congress now owns 241 of Adams’ original negatives and 209 of his prints.

Though not a proud or positive moment in American history, the study of such moments is vital to ensuring a brighter and better future. The uplifting of art as a preservation of history and a tool for accountability is invaluable not only in the time it was originally created, but also as a reinforcement for current artists, historians and activists to remember that art can change the world.

The Schmucker Art Gallery is open to the public for free Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will be displaying the Ansel Adams: Manzanar exhibition until April 13, 2024.

Their exhibition displays fifty prints from American photographer Ansel Adams, who died in 1984 at the age of 82. (Photo William Oehler/The Gettysburgian)

Different walls of the gallery show portraits of the center in themes such as People, Family, Labor, Agriculture and Social Life. (Photo William Oehler/The Gettysburgian)