Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory
Bea Nettles (American, b. 1946). Evenin . . ., August 1970. Collage with gelatin silver prints, stitching, and applied color. George Eastman Museum, purchase. © Bea Nettles
Bea Nettles (American, b. 1946). Hole, 2005, from Return Trips. Inkjet print. George Eastman Museum, gift of the artist. © Bea Nettles
Bea Nettles (American, b. 1946). String of Hearts, 1984, from Rachel's Holidays. Dye imbibition print. George Eastman Museum, gift of the artist. © Bea Nettles
Bea Nettles (American, b. 1946). Moon and Dish, 1977, from Flamingo in the Dark. Gum bichromate prints with applied color. George Eastman Museum, purchase with funds from the Charina Foundation. © Bea Nettles
Bea Nettles (American, b. 1946). Events in the Water, 1972. From Events in the Water. Gelatin silver print. Collection of the artist. © Bea Nettles
Bea Nettles (American, b. 1946). Coffee Cup, 1985, from Landscapes of Innocence. Photographic etching. George Eastman Museum, gift of the artist. © Bea Nettles
Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory originally opened at the George Eastman Museum on January 31, 2020, and was planned to be on view through June 14. Six weeks after opening the exhibition, the museum had to close due to COVID-19 and a virtual version of the exhibition was offered online. Now, the Eastman Museum is pleased to bring the exhibition back to our galleries for visitors to explore in person.
Bea Nettles explores the narrative potential of photography through constructed images often made with alternative photographic processes. The first large-scale retrospective of her fifty-year career, Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory demonstrates this celebrated artist’s experimental approaches to art-making. Combining craft and photography, Nettles’s work makes use of wide-ranging tools and materials, including fabric and stitching, instamatic cameras, the book format, manually applied color, and hand-coated photographic emulsions. Her imagery evokes metaphors that reference key stages in the lives of women, often with autobiographic undertones, and her key motifs draw upon mythology, family, motherhood, place, landscape, dreams, aging, and the passage of time.
Nettles is a tremendously productive artist whose work has become part of museum permanent collections from coast to coast. Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory provides a comprehensive look at the work of an artist who profoundly illuminates our inner worlds.
Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory is co-organized by the George Eastman Museum and the Sheldon Art Galleries, St. Louis. It was co-curated by Jamie M. Allen and Olivia Lahs-Gonzales.
Generously supported by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, the Rubens Family Foundation, and Susan and Nathan Robfogel, and made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Virtual 360 Tour
Explore I Believe I'll Run Onvirtually, complete with all audio, text, and full-size images.
Navigation tips:
- Wall text and images are available to view by clicking the teal dots next to the works. To see the work in greater detail, simply click on the image for it to expand to full screen.
- For video and PDFs, click on the yellow dots. You can watch and read these within the Matterport.
Tours & Books
Curator's Virtual Tour: Motherhood
Jamie M. Allen, Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Associate Curator, Department of Photography, discusses some of the works relating to motherhood that are featured in Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory.
Books by Bea Nettles
Explore select books featured in the exhibition as PDFs and videos.
A is for Applebiting Alligators
Mountain Dream Tarot: A Deck of 78 Photographic Cards
Exhibition Catalogue
The exhibition catalogue provides a survey of Bea Nettles’s groundbreaking mixed-media work, spanning a half century of innovative perspectives that push the boundaries of how we define photography. It presents the most up-to-date scholarship on Bea Nettles, with essays by Jamie M. Allen, the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Associate Curator of the Department of Photography at the George Eastman Museum; Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, former director of the Sheldon Art Galleries, St. Louis, Missouri; and Amy L. Powell, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and with additional texts by Bea Nettles. The volume is illustrated with examples from all of Nettles’s major series, including her photographic and book works.
Related
Tours, Talks, Member Events | Curator's Gallery Talk—Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory
Exhibition Details
Museum Hours
Museum Hours
| Day | Hours |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 10 a.m.–5 p.m. |
| Wednesday | 10 a.m.–5 p.m. |
| Thursday | 10 a.m.–5 p.m. |
| Friday | 10 a.m.–5 p.m. |
| Saturday | 10 a.m.–5 p.m. |
| Sunday | 11 a.m.–5 p.m. |
| Monday | Closed |