Addison Gallery Showcases Fall Exhibitions That Explore the Dynamic between Words and Image.

ANDOVER, Mass. -- The variety of ways in which word and image can inform and enhance one another is a theme that runs through the exhibitions at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA this fall. Opening September 22 and running through January 6, 2008, Ipswich Days: Arthur Wesley Dow and His Hometown is inspired by a recently discovered and never exhibited album of photographs that Dow made for poet Everett Stanley Hubbard. Class Pictures:Photographs by Dawoud Bey, is on view from September 4 through December 30, 2007, and features a series of large-scale portraits of adolescents accompanied by the sitters' writings.

"The Addison is very pleased to be able to present these two compelling exhibitions. With Dawoud Bey's Class Pictures, a unique synthesis of writing and image allows teens to speak for themselves, offering surprisingly sensitive portrayals," said Addison Gallery Director Brian Allen. "In developing Ipswich Days, guest curator Trevor Fairbrother has been able to reveal the rich artistic collaboration between devoted friends, Dow, the artist, and Hubbard, an Ipswich-based poet."

Artist Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), renowned for works inspired by nature and reflecting the orderly design and fine handcraft of the Arts and Crafts movement, was also a devoted advocate for his hometown. In 1899, Dow made an album of forty-one cyanotypes, blue-toned photographs depicting scenes of Ipswich for Everett Hubbard.

This album includes images of Ipswich's clam shanties, marshes, farms, people, trees, flowers and boats. The exhibition analyzes this album and its significance in Dow's career by placing the photographs within the context of a selection of his important and related paintings and prints of Ipswich. Through these juxtapositions, the exhibition offers a new appreciation for Dow's place as an artistic innovator, while also documenting his love for his rural and historic hometown.

To create the body of work that comprises Class Pictures, photographer Dawoud Bey (b. 1953), spent five years traveling the country to capture images of teenagers who defy stereotypes of American youth. In photographing young people from all parts of the economic, racial, and ethnic spectrum, in both public and private high schools, locally in Lawrence and Andover, MA; and also in Detroit; Orlando, San Francisco; and New York, Bey has created a series of psychologically penetrating portraits.

Bey spent three to four weeks in each school photographing students. The artist also requested that each subject write a page about themselves for display alongside the photographs. These first-person statements are often touching, funny, or harrowing, and paired with the images, they invariably deepen our appreciation for young adults facing today's challenges. It is Bey's respect for and interest in high school students that led him to the Class Pictures project. Creating a compelling portrait of American youth in its various social and human dimensions, Bey describes his work as a way to give voice to those who do not usually have one.

The Addison Gallery of American Art, located on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, is open to the public from Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Sunday 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on Monday. Admission to all exhibitions and events is free. The Addison Gallery also offers free education programs for teachers and groups. For more information, call 978-749-4015, or visit the website at www.addisongallery.org.

Coinciding with the Addison's showing of Ipswich Days: Arthur Wesley Dow and His Hometown, two other exhibitions will focus on Dow's work. From October 1, 2007-February 17, 2008, Arthur Wesley Dow: Photographer and Printmaker will be on exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Ipswich Historical Society and Museum, Ipswich, Massachusetts will present Arthur Wesley Dow: His Continuing Influence on Local Artists, opening on September 27th.

About the Addison Gallery of American Art

Devoted exclusively to American Art, the mission of the Addison Gallery of American Art is to acquire, preserve, interpret and exhibit works of art for the education and enjoyment of all. Opened in 1931, the Gallery has one of the most important collections of American art in the country that includes approximately 14,000 works by prominent American artists such as George Bellows, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe and Jackson Pollock, as well as photographers Eadweard Muybridge, Walker Evans, Robert Frank and many more. The Addison Gallery, located on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, offers a continually rotating series of exhibitions and programs, all of which are free and open to the public. For more information, call 978-749-4015, or visit the website at www.addisongallery.org.

Support for Ipswich Days: Arthur Wesley Dow and His Hometown and the accompanying publication has been provided by Mary and Keith Kauppila and the Morris Tyler Fund.

Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, has organized the traveling exhibition, Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey and produced the accompanying publications. This project was made possible, in part, with generous support from Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro. Additional support was provided by Sandra and Jack Guthman, Scott and Willa Lang, Susan and Lewis Manilow, and Madeline Murphy Rabb. The Addison presentation is made possible through the generous support of the Edward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence Fund and the Mollie Bennett Lupe & Garland M. Lasater Exhibitions Fund.