The Museum in the Park at Chief Logan State Park has unveiled a new exhibit, The Omar Project: Not a Simple Story. On Thursday, Oct. 5, the Museum will host a reception and gallery presentation by Betty Rivard, exhibit coordinator, from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. The exhibit will remain on display through the month of October. The reception is free and open to the public.
The exhibit consists of 20 black and white photographs of everyday life in the Logan County community of Omar. The photographs were taken in 1935 and 1938 by Ben Shahn and Marion Post Wolcott, photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration (FSA).
The FSA’s primary goal was to combat the social and economic dislocations caused by the distressing agricultural climate during the Depression-era years. The visits to Omar were part of a larger project to take photographs across American between 1935 and 1943. The photographers were employed to publicize the conditions of the rural poor in America. Fifteen photographers took more than 2,000 photographs in West Virginia.
Shahn was already an established painter and lithographer when he began working on this project. Born in Lithuania in 1898, Shahn and his family emigrated to the United States when he was six years old. In 1911, he was apprenticed to a commercial lithographer and earned his living in the trade until the early 1930s when he began to receive recognition as a fine artist. In 1933, Shahn’s younger brother paid off a wager with a Leica camera, adding another medium to his repertoire.
Wolcott was born into a relatively well-to-do family in Bloomfield, N.J., in 1910. In her studies as a young woman, she leaned towards the progressive and bohemian that her mother cultivated in her. Wolcott studied dance with Ruth St. Denis, a pioneer of modern dance. Her interest in experimental dance continued and she studied with Doris Humphrey. Scholars of her work for the FSA have suggested that these ideas about movement, presence and the empowering nature of physical expression surface in her photographs. At the Photo League in New York, she studied pioneers of documentary photography like Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine. It is also where she was introduced to Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand, two figures who played a big role in directing her to work with the FSA.
Rivard of Duck, has been taking photographs since she was a young girl. She grew up in Detroit and San Francisco, but rural West Virginia has been her home for most of her life. After her retirement from a career as a social worker and planner for the state, she served an apprenticeship with a master photographer. Her photographs have been seen in museums and galleries across the state and she received a fellowship in 2004 from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts of the Department of Arts, Culture and History. Through her business, West Virginia Homeplace, she sells post cards, note cards, reprints, and original black-and-white darkroom photographs in a number of retail outlets.
Funding for the exhibit came from a grant to the Coalfields Convention and Visitors Bureau from the West Virginia Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The exhibit will travel to the Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, Logan and Williamson campuses, and the West Virginia University Library. It will be permanently housed at the Logan Interpretative Center that is to be built off Corridor G.
For more information about the exhibition, contact Adam Hodges, site manager for the Museum in the Park, at (304) 792-7229.
The Museum in the Park is a regional cultural center showcasing the best in West Virginia history and the arts. It features changing exhibits and displays of artwork and historical items from the collections of the West Virginia State Museum and State Archives. One area of the museum is dedicated to local and regional history. It is operated and maintained by the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History and is located four miles north of Logan on West Virginia Route 10 at Chief Logan State Park. Museum hours are 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 1 - 6 p.m. on Sunday.
The West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, an agency of the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, brings together the state’s past, present and future through programs and services in the areas of archives and history, the arts, historic preservation and museums. Visit the Division’s website at www.wvculture.org for more information about programs of the Division. The Department of Arts, Culture and History is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
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