Artist Carrie Mae Weems Exhibits Latest Work

“All About Eve” at Harvard’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute

Artist Talk and Reception on October 15 at Sackler Museum

Cambridge - Harvard’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research has just unveiled a new installation featuring celebrated artist and photographer Carrie Mae Weems. Weems’s exhibit “All About Eve: Women, Sex, and Desire” is currently on display at the Du Bois Institute’s Neil L. and Angelica Zander Rudenstine Gallery during the fall semester and features the sensuous and suspenseful video “Italian Dreams,” floor-to-ceiling prints from the worshipful “Roaming” series and the seminal “Kitchen Table” series.

Known for using herself as a subject and exploring the intersection of race, gender, and history in her multi-layered, poignant images, Weems will be on-hand to discuss her work at an artist talk on October 15 at Sackler Museum. Co-sponsored with Harvard University Art Museums, Weems has described the common thread in “All About Eve” as an investigation and celebration of women and their disparate, and sometimes, misplaced desires. This visit to Harvard will be Weems’s first in three years.

Weems Rifles Through History in an Attempt to Settle the Present
Artist and writer, Cheryl Kaplan, writes: “Carrie Mae Weems shows up at the right historic moments, blending with the imperfect past. In her most recent film, “Italian Dreams”, Weems is both siren and taskmaster, drifting through the halls of the Cinecittà in Rome like she owns the place. She is also the perpetual outsider, rifling through history in an attempt to settle the present. Weems has a broad timeline and a specific mission to probe race, gender and power through her photographs, films and installations while organizing history through its re-stagings.”

About Carrie Mae Weems
Born in Portland, Oregon, Weems received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of Arts and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego. A recipient of the Rome Prize in 2005, Weems also completed the graduate program in folklore at the University of California, San Diego. An accomplished educator, Weems has taught at Harvard and Wellesley and has received numerous awards including the Alpert Award for Visual Arts (1996), an NEA Visual Arts Fellowship (1994), and Photographer of the Year from the San Francisco Friends of Photography, (1994).

WHAT:
Artist and photographer, Carrie Mae Weems, “All About Eve: Women, Sex, and Desire,” on view through January 3, 2008 at the Neil L. and Angelica Rudenstine Gallery, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University, 104 Mt. Auburn Street, 3R, Cambridge. Artist Talk and Reception, October 15, 6 P.M., Sackler Hall, Sackler Museum, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Rudenstine Gallery hours, Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

CONTACT:
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University, 617.495.8508 or visit www.dubois.fas.harvard.edu