Guest Lecture: John Jacob on The Odyssey of Diane Arbus.

City Gallery Wellington Te Whare
Toi is proud to present a lecture on the life and legacy of Diane Arbus by John
Jacob, McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the Smithsonian American Art
Museum, in connection with our current exhibition A
Box of Ten Photographs.

In late 1969, Diane Arbus began to
work on a portfolio. At the time of her death in 1971, she had completed the
printing for eight known sets of A Box of Ten Photographs, of a planned
edition of fifty, only four of which she sold during her lifetime. 

This presentation draws on Jacob’s
research for Diane Arbus: A Box of Ten Photographs, the first exhibition
to focus exclusively on the portfolio. Using the recorded voices of those who
knew and worked with her, it tracks the evolution of an Arbus canon grounded in
her work on the portfolio; the solidification of that canon as a consequence of
her untimely death; and the emergence of discourse as institutions sought to
accommodate and respond to its challenges.

This presentation will be followed by a live
Q&A session.

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John Jacob is McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the Smithsonian
American Art Museum, where his exhibitions have included, “Harlem Heroes:
Photographs by Carl Van Vechten” (2016), “Diane Arbus: A box of ten
photographs” and “Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen” (2018), “Welcome Home: A
Portrait of East Baltimore” (2021), and “Carrie Mae Weems: Looking Forward,
Looking Back” (2023, co-curator with Saisha Grayson). Previously, Jacob was
director of the Inge Morath Foundation, and program director at the Magnum
Foundation for its Legacy Program that manages materials related to the history
of Magnum Photos. Jacob began his career as an artist, working with
reproductive media including photography, rubber-stamps, mail art and artist’s
books.