New Exhibition: Lisa McCarty: Transcendental Concord

Exhibition runs from October 10 –December 8, 2019, Museum Hours Tuesday-Sunday 10-5; Thursdays galleries are open FREE to public from 5-8pm.

Gallery Talk: October 11 – 4pm followed by a free reception: 5:30 – 7:00pm

   Transcendental Concord documents the spirit of Transcendentalism, the literary, social and philosophical movement that arose from Concord, Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century, just prior to the American Civil War. Admired and disdained for their individualism, as well as their brazen sincerity, the Transcendentalists challenged conventions in their daily lives and in their writings. In the face of growing inhumanity and industrialization they pioneered models of communal living, modern environmental thinking, education reform and secular spirituality.

While the circle of Transcendentalists in New England was wide, at its center was a core group that lived in Concord.  Bronson Alcott and daughter Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau lived within a few miles of each other for nearly twenty years, regularly meeting in each other’s homes and on the verdant paths of Walden Woods to discuss current events, politics, spiritual beliefs, inspirations and disappointments, as well as their observations of the natural worlds. Through this daily communion with nature, neighbors, and their own minds, these five Concordians created bodies of work that have inspired generation of artist and radicals to “live deliberately” including McCarty.

In the course of a year and in every season, McCarty explored and photographed the sites where the Transcendentalists lived and wrote in Concord, as well as the landscape that nourished them.  According to McCarty, “while on these pilgrimages, I photographed simply, wandering on foot with a film camera. I    photographed deliberately, seeking out specific places in Concord that are referenced in Transcendentalist writings; I photographed with reverence toward the natural world, observing variations large and small in the environment; and I photographed experimentally, incorporating long exposures and camera movements, embracing mediations of light that II often could not explain.  By combining these images with texts from my personal Library, I pay homage to the Transcendental movement and provide a glimpse into a world that is both past and present.”

Lisa McCarty is an artist, curator, and educator currently based in Dallas, Texas. She has participated in over 70 exhibitions and screenings at venues such as the American University Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Chicago Photography Center, Fruitland Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, Houston Center for Photography, and the Visual Studies Workshop.  McCarty’s photographs have also been featured in a variety of international festivals. Her first monograph, Transcendental Concord was published by Radius Books in 2018.

McCarty received an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University. She has taught at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies and was curator of the Archive of Documentary Arts. She now lives in Texas where she is teaching photography at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.