January 13, 2013
Lecturer in History Alan Teller curates show at Chicago History Museum
Alan Teller, adjunct professor of history, helped to curate a photography exhibit at the Chicago History Museum. The desig...
This non-traditional exhibit called “Vivian Maier’s Chicago,” which is part art exhibit, part sound installation, will be open through 2013.
I’m pleased to be part of the team that developed the concept, curated and designed ‘Vivian Maier’s Chicago’ at the Chicago History Museum. If you don’t know, Maier was a suburban nanny who, unbeknown to her employers, was a remarkable street photographer. Around the time of her death a few years ago, some 100,000 negatives were found in a storage locker. Since then, The New York Times, Time Magazine and countless other publications have been telling her story.
Maier has had numerous gallery exhibitions as well, but this one is not a traditional photo exhibit. It is an art installation in a history museum. The central core of the gallery is a series of 45” square photos, suspended by cables from a grid in the ceiling.
“Visitors wander through the space, encountering her images which I have carefully selected and sequenced,” said Teller. Bits and pieces of other images peek through; other museum visitors are also glimpsed as they view the exhibit. The surrounding walls feature a 5” high continuos strip of 18 rolls of her photos–like a single frame contact sheet. A soundtrack contains period sounds (car horns, train sounds) along with jazz of the time.
“It’s definitely an experience!”