Carrie Mae Weems

Weems was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1953, the second of seven children to Carrie Polk and Myrlie Weems.[6] She began participating in dance and street theater in 1965.[1] At the age of 16 she gave birth to her first and only child, a daughter named Faith C. Weems.[7] Later that year she moved out of her parents’ home and soon relocated to San Francisco to study modern dance with Anna Halprin at a workshop Halprin had started with several other dancers, as well as the artists John Cage and Robert Morris.[8] She decided to continue her arts schooling and attended the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, graduating at the age of 28 with her B.A. She received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego.[9] Weems also participated in the folklore graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley.[10]

While in her early twenties, Carrie Mae Weems was politically active in the labor movement as a union organizer.[1] Her first camera, which she received as a birthday gift,[11] was used for this work before being used for artistic purposes. She was inspired to pursue photography after she came across The Black Photography Annual, a book of images by African-American photographers including Shawn Walker, Beuford Smith, Anthony Barboza, Ming Smith, Adger Cowans, and Roy DeCarava, who Weems found inspiring.[12] This led her to New York City, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she began to meet other artists and photographers such as Coreen Simpson and Frank Stewart, and they began to form a community. In 1976 Weems took a photography class at the Museum taught by Dawoud Bey. She returned to San Francisco, but lived bi-coastally and was invited by Janet Henry to teach at the Studio Museum[13] and a community of photographers in New York.[12]

Carrie Mae Weems, "The Hampton Project," exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art, 2000

In 1983, Carrie Mae Weems completed her first collection of photographs, text, and spoken word, called Family Pictures and Stories.[14] The images told the story of her family, and she has said that in this project she was trying to explore the movement of black families out of the South and into the North, using her family as a model for the larger theme.[12] Her next series, called Ain't Jokin', was completed in 1988. It focused on racial jokes and internalized racism. Another series called American Icons, completed in 1989, also focused on racism. Weems has said that throughout the 1980s she was turning away from the documentary photography genre, instead "creating representations that appeared to be documents but were in fact staged" and also "incorporating text, using multiples images, diptychs and triptychs, and constructing narratives."[12] Sexism was the next focal point for her. It was the topic of one of her most well known collections called The Kitchen Table series which was completed in over a two year period, 1989 to 1990 and has Weems cast as the central character in the photographs.[11][15][16] About Kitchen Table and Family Pictures and Stories, Weems has said: "I use my own constructed image as a vehicle for questioning ideas about the role of tradition, the nature of family, monogamy, polygamy, relationships between men and women, between women and their children, and between women and other women—underscoring the critical problems and the possible resolves."[12] She has expressed disbelief and concern about the exclusion of images of the black community, particularly black women, from the popular media, and she aims to represent these excluded subjects and speak to their experience through her work. These photographs created space for other black female artists to further create art. Weems has also reflected on the themes and inspirations of her work as a whole, saying,

... from the very beginning, I've been interested in the idea of power and the consequences of power; relationships are made and articulated through power. Another thing that's interesting about the early work is that even though I've been engaged in the idea of autobiography, other ideas have been more important: the role of narrative, the social levels of humor, the deconstruction of documentary, the construction of history, the use of text, storytelling, performance, and the role of memory have all been more central to my thinking than autobiography.[12]

Other series created by Weems include: the Sea Island Series (1991–92), the Africa Series (1993), From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–96), Who What When Where (1998), Ritual & Revolution (1998), the Louisiana Project (2003), Roaming (2006), and the Museum Series, which she began in 2007.[11][17][18] Her most recent project, Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, is a multimedia performance that explores "the role of grace in the pursuit of democracy."[19]

In her almost 30-year career, Carrie Mae Weems has won numerous awards. She was named Photographer of the Year by the Friends of Photography. In 2005, she was awarded the Distinguished Photographer's Award in recognition of her significant contributions to the world of photography.[20] Her talents have also been recognized by numerous colleges, including Harvard University and Wellesley College, with fellowships, artist-in-residence and visiting professor positions. She taught photography at Hampshire College in the late 1980s. She was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2013.[21] In 2015 Weems was named a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow. In September 2015, the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research presented her with the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal.[22]

The first comprehensive retrospective of her work opened in September 2012 at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee,[11][23] as a part of the center's exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video. Curated by Katie Delmez, the exhibition ran until January 13, 2013, and later traveled to Portland Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts. The 30-year retrospective exhibition opened in January 2014 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.[11][24] This was the first time an "African-American woman [was] ever given a solo exhibition" at the Guggenheim.[25] Weems' work returned to the Frist in October 2013 as a part of the center's 30 Americans gallery, alongside black artists ranging from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Kehinde Wiley.[26]

Weems' work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art,[27] New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,[28] the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,[29] the Cleveland Museum of Art,[30] the Portland Art Museum,[31] the Tate Museum in London[32] and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.[33] Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008.[34]

A full-color, visual book, titled Carrie Mae Weems, was published by Yale University Press in October 2012.[35] The book offers the first major survey of Weems' career and includes a collection of essays from leading and emerging scholars in addition to over 200 of Weems' most important works.[36]

Weems lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn[37] and Syracuse, New York, with her husband Jeffrey Hoone. She continues to produce art that provides social commentary on the experiences of people of color, especially black women, in America.[1]

Weems is one of six artist-curators who made selections for Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from May 24, 2019, through January 12, 2020.[38]

Presentations of her work have included exhibitions at:[39]

• Women in Photography, Cityscape Photo Gallery, Pasadena, CA, 1981
• Multi-Cultural Focus, Barnsdall Art gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1981
• Family Pictures and Stories, Multi-Cultural Gallery, San Diego, CA, 1984
• People Close Up, Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 1986
• Social Concerns, Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD, 1986
• Past, Present, Future, The New Museum, New York, NY, 1986
• Visible Differences, Centro Cultural de la Raza, San Diego, CA, 1987
• The Other, The Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX, 1988
• A Century of Protest, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, 1989
• Black Women Photographers, Ten.8, London, England, 1990
• Who Counts?, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1990
• Biological Factors, Nexus Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 1990
• Trouble in Paradise, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston, MA, 1990
• Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1991
• Of Light and Language, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA, 1991
• Pleasures and terrors of Domestic Comfort, MOMA, New York, NY, 1991
• Calling Out My Name, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY (traveled to PPOW gallery, New York, NY), 1991
• Disclosing the Myth of Family, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1992
• Schwarze Kunst: Konzepte zur Politik und Identitat, Neue Gesellschaft fur dingende Kunst, Berlin, Germany, 1992
• Dirt and Domesticity: Constructions of the Feminine, Whitney Museum of American Art, at Equitable Center, New York, NY, 1992
• Art, Politics, and Community, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Mansfield, CT (traveled to Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA), 1992
• Mis/Taken identities, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA (traveled to Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria; Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen im Forum Langenstraße, Germany; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA), 1992–1994
• Photography: Expanding the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1992–1994
• Sea Island, The Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia, PA, 1993
• Carrie Mae Weems (traveling exhibition), The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, 1993
• And 22 Million Very Tired and very Angry People, Walter/McBean gallery, San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco, CA, 1993
• Enlightenment, Revolution, A Gallery Project, Ferndale, MI, 1993
• Fictions of the Self: The Portrait in Contemporary Photography, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC; Herter Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 1993–1994
• The Theatre of Refusal: Black Art and the Mainstream Criticism, Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine, CA (traveled to University of California, Davis, CA; and University of California, Riverside, CA), 1993–1994
• Women's Representation of Women, Sapporo American Center Gallery, Sapporo, Japan (traveled to Aka Renga Cultural Center, Fukuoka City, Japan; Kyoto International Community House, Kyoto, Japan; Aichi Prefectural Arts Center, Nagoya, Japan; Osaka Prefectural Contemporary Arts Center, Japan; Spiral Arts Center, Tokyo, Japan), 1994
• Imagining Families: Images and Voices, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1994–1995
• Black Male, Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, and The Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, 1994–1995
• Carrie Mae Weems Reacts to Hidden Witness, J. Paul Getty Museum of Art, Malibu, CA, 1995
• Projects 52, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1995
• StoryLand: Narrative Vision and Social Space, Walter Phillips gallery, The Banff Center for the Arts, Banff, Canada, 1995
• Embedded Metaphor, Traveling exhibit, curated by Nina Felshin, 1996
• Inside the Visible, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., international traveling exhibition, 1996
• Gender - Beyond Memory, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan, 1996
• 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Africus Institute for Contemporary Art, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1997
• Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African-American Artists, traveling exhibition, 1998
• Taboo: Repression and Revolt in Modern Art, Gallery St. Etienne, New York, NY, 1998
• Tell me a Story: Narration in Contemporary Painting and Photography, Center National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Grenoble, France, 1998
• Recent Work: Carrie Mae Weems 1992–98, Everson Art Museum, Syracuse, NY, 1998–1999
• Who, What, When, and Where, Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris, New York, NY, 1998–1999
• Ritual & Revolution, DAK'ART 98: Biennale of Contemporary Art, Galerie National d'Art, Dakar, Senegal, 1998–1999
• It's Only Rock and Roll, traveling exhibition, 1999
• Claustrophobia: Disturbing the Domestic in Contemporary Art, traveling exhibition, 1999
• Histories (Re)membered, The Bronx Museum of Art, New York, NY, 1999
• Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, 2000–2003
• Looking Forward, Looking Back, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, 2000
• Material and Matter: Loans to and Selections from the Studio Museum Collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2000
• The View From Here: Issues of Cultural Identity and Perspective in Contemporary Russian and American Art, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2000
• Strength and Diversity: A Celebration of African-American Artists, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2000
• Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present, Smithsonian Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and culture, Washington, DC, 2000
• History Now, touring exhibition beginning at the Liljevalchs Konsthall and Riksutstallningar, Stockholm, Sweden, 2002
• Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More... On Collecting, traveling exhibition curated by Independent curators International, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2002
• The Louisiana Project, Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, 2003
• Cuba on the Verge, International Center of Photography, New York, NY, 2003
• Crimes and Misdemeanors: Politics in U.S. Art of the 1980s, Lois & Richard Rosenthal center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH, 2003
• Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, 2004
• Beyond Compare: Women Photographers on Beauty, BCE, Toronto (traveling exhibit), 2004
• African American Art - Photographs from the Collection, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO, 2005
• Figuratively Speaking, Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL, 2005
• The Whole World is Rotten, Jack Shainman gallery, New York, NY, 2005
• Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2005
• Out of Time: A Contemporary View, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2006
• Black Alphabet: Contexts of Contemporary African-American Art, Zacheta national gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2006
• Hidden in Plain Sight, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 2007
• Embracing Eatonville, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI, 2007
• The 21st century, The Feminine Century, and the century of Diversity and Hope, 2009 International Incheon Women Artists' Biennial, Incheon, South Korea, 2009–2010
• Colour Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, Tate Liverpool, UK, 2009–2010
• Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic, Tate Liverpool, UK, 2009–2010
• From Then to Now: Masterworks of Contemporary African American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, 2009–2010
• Carrie Mae Weems: Estudios Sociales, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain, 2010
• Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2010
• Slow Fade to Black, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY, 2010
• The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, Nasher Museum, Durham, NC, 2010
• Myth, Manners and Memory: Photographers of the American South, De La Warr Pavilion, East Sussex, UK, 2010
• Off the Wall: Part 1 – Thirty Performative Actions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, 2010
• The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973–1991, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, Purchase, New York, NY, 2010
• Posing Beauty: African American Images From the 1890s to the Present, Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, 2010
• Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with 21 Contemporary Artists, Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY, 2010
• Unsettled: Photography and Politics in Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2010
• Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN, 2012
• This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, 2012
• La Triennale: Intense Proximity, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2012
• Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba, 2012
• The Maddening Crowd (video installation), McNay Art Museum, Sa Antonio, TX, 2012
• Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR;[40] Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH;[30] Cantor Center for the Visual Arts, Stanford, CA,[41] 2013
• Feminist And..., The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA, 2013
• Seven Sisters, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2013
• Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. New York, NY, 2014[42]
• P.3 Prospect New Orleans, The McKenna Museum, New Orleans, LA, 2014
• Color: Real and Imagined, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, England, 2014
• Carrie Mae Weems: The Museum Series, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, 2014
• Wide Angle: American Photographs, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 2014
• The Memory of Time, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2015
• Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy, 2015
• Winter in America, The School (Jack Shainman Gallery), 2015
• An Exhibition of African American Photographers from the Daguerreian to the Digital Eras, Marshall Fine Arts Center at Haveford College, Haveford, PA, 2015
• Represent: 200 years of African American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2015
• Under Color of Law, The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art and Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, 2015
• 30 Americans, Detroit Institute of Arts, 2015
• Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, Spoleto Festival, Spoleto, Italy, 2016
• The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art. Cambridge, MA, 2016[43]
• Viewpoints, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (February 18–June 18, 2017)
• We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (April 21–September 17, 2017)
• Blue Black, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO (June 9–October 7, 2017)
• Matera Imagined: Photography and a Southern Italian Town, American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy (2017)
• ...And the People, Maruani Mercer, Knokke, Belgium (August 5–September 4, 2017)
• Medium, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA (August 29–December 3, 2017)
• Carrie Mae Weems: Ritual and Revolution, Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (September 12–December 10, 2017)
• Dimensions of Black, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA (September 17–December 28, 2017)
• Posing Beauty in African American Culture, Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL (October 6, 2016 – January 21, 2018)
• We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA (October 13, 2017 – January 14, 2018)
• Edward Hopper Citation of Merit in the Visual Arts Recipient Exhibition, Carrie Mae Weems: Beacon, Nyack, NY (November 10, 2017 – February 25, 2018)
• Making Home: Contemporary Works From the DIA, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (December 1, 2017 – June 6, 2018)
• We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (June 27–September 30, 2018)
• Be Strong and Do Not Betray Your Soul: Selections from the Light Work Collection, Light Work, Syracuse, NY (August 27–October 18, 2018)
• Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Boston, MA (September 10–December 13, 2018)
• Family Pictures, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI (September 14, 2018 – January 20, 2019)
• Heave, 2018 Cornell University Biennial, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (September 20, 2018–November 5, 2018)
• Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement, Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA (January 13, 2019–May 5, 2019)
• Carrie Mae Weems II Over Time, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (September 7, 2019–October 5, 2019)

• 2005: Distinguished Photographers Award[44]
• 2007: Anonymous Was A Woman Award[45]
• 2013: Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award[46]
• 2013: MacArthur Fellow, "Genius" Award[47]
• 2014: BET Visual Arts Award[48]
• 2014: Lucie Award
• 2015: ICP Spotlights Award from the International Center of Photography.[49]
• 2015: Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow[50]
• 2015: W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University[51]
• 2015: Honorary Doctorate from the School of Visual Arts
• 2016: National Artist Award, Anderson Ranch Arts Center[52]
• 2016: Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theatre
• 2016: College Arts Association
• 2016: DeFINE ART
• 2016: Art of Change Fellow, Ford Foundation
• 2017: Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University[53]
• 2017: Inga Maren Otto Fellowship, The Watermill Center[54]
• 2019: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, Bristol.[55]

• Carrie Mae Weems : The Museum of Modern Art (N.Y.),[56] 1995.
• Carrie Mae Weems : Image Maker,[57] 1995.
• Carrie Mae Weems : Recent Work, 1992––1998,[58] 1998.
• Carrie Mae Weems: In Louisiana Project,[59] 2004.
• Carrie Mae Weems: Constructing History,[60] 2008.
• Carrie Mae Weems : Social Studies,[61] 2010.
• Carrie Mae Weems : Three Decades of Photography and Video,[62] 2012.
• Carrie Mae Weems: Kitchen Table Series,[63] 2016.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carrie Mae Weems.

• Official website
• "Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video", Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee
• "Carrie Mae Weems: Photographer and Video Artist", MacArthur Foundation. (2013, September 24).
• Sturtz, Ken. (2013, September 25). "Syracuse photographer receives prestigious MacArthur Fellowship", Syracuse.com
• Carrie Mae Weems in the Minneapolis Institute or Art, Minneapolis, MN
• Womanism and Black Feminism in the works of Carrie Weems