Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries

Scheduled to coincide with The Photography of Charles Sheeler, this exhibition presents work by other photographers of the period who also drew inspiration from the American city, the machine, and the radical innovations of European modernism. Approximately forty rare vintage photographs from the Museum's collection and that of the Gilman Paper Company are shown. Among the highlights are images by Morton Schamberg, one of Sheeler's close friends, with whom he discovered the Bucks County vernacular architecture that inspired his first serious attempts at photography. Photographs by important members of the American avant-garde between the two world wars are also featured, including work by Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen (who helped to launch Sheeler's commercial photographic career), Paul Strand, and Edward Weston, among others. By sketching out this aesthetic environment, the exhibition brings into focus the nature and scope of Sheeler's photographic accomplishments.