During the massive German occupation of much of Europe during World War II, the people of Denmark rescued more than 90% of the country’s Jewish residents from German deportation, brutal internment and starvation, and systemic murder. In the early 1990s, photographer Judy Glickman Lauder took portraits of Danes who had protected or rescued Jews and of Jews who were rescued. The stories accompanying each photograph convey the power of moral courage in confronting hate and atrocities.

Loneliness permeates Adam Ekberg’s whimsical photographs that document the climax of orchestrated events. While the camera freezes them into still lifes, a sense of continuity—like the arc of a story—happens as one realizes that Ekberg (American, b. 1975) invented, manifested, documented, and concluded these events. The objects take on lives of their own, even though we know that such agency is impossible.

For this nineteenth rotation, Stephanie Hofner, collection manager in the Department of Photography, worked with her four-year-old daughter Sawyer to select objects. While previous displays have been thematic, we will be sharing a wider variety of objects in the rotations going forward, while still highlighting the breadth and depth of the museum’s photograph holdings. An emphasis on family-friendly content can also be found thanks to Stephanie and Sawyer’s collaboration.