Harvard University

May 2

WENDEL A. WHITE

MANIFEST: THIRTEEN COLONIES
Peabody Museum Exhibition

About

Wendel A. White was awarded a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in photography from the University of Texas at Austin. White taught photography at the School of Visual Arts, NY; The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, NY; the International Center for Photography, NY; Rochester Institute of Technology; and is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art at Stockton University.

His work has received various awards and fellowships including an honorary Doctor of Arts (h.c.), Oakland University; Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography; Bunn Lectureship in Photography, Bradley University; three artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and New Works Photography Fellowship from En Foco Inc.

Exhibition

Manifest | Thirteen Colonies is a photographic project that journeys through the repositories of African American material culture found in libraries, museums, and archives of the original thirteen English colonies and Washington, DC. Conceived by photographer Wendel A. White, this project is a personal reliquary of the remarkable evidence of Black agency and racial oppression stored in public collections. Accompanying his imagery, White discusses his approach to finding, selecting, and photographing artifacts—from rare, singular objects to more quotidian materials—and highlights their significance as forensic evidence of Black life and history in the United States—exhibition at Peabody Museum, Harvard University, March 18, 2024 – April 13, 2025.

Wendel A White, the 2021 recipient of the Peabody Museum’s Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography, explains that his photographs are “a response to the collective physical remnants of the American concept and representation of race.”

Wendel A. White

Exhibition