In conjunction with NOMA’s exhibition of its American art collection, Visions of US: American Art at NOMA, the museum will present a selection of Tina Barney’s photographs in the Great Hall.

Since the mid 1970s, Tina Barney has photographed her family and friends in color with a large format view camera. Barney’s pictures record, in unflinching detail, the vast spectrum of social relationships, from the adroit to the awkward. These interactions take place against backdrops that are equally varied, highlighting the sometimes elegant, sometimes bizarre, always very personal spaces created in the service of comfort or entertainment. Although her pictures often seem to be tightly composed stills from some theatrical performance, they are largely un-posed. Barney waits for these visually compelling moments to coalesce, moments in which light, form, and content converge to tell a singular story about the ways in which people interact.

Barney’s iconic photographs are housed in the permanent collections of numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial in 1987, a mid-career retrospective at the MoMA in 1991, the New York State Theatre, the Barbican Art Centre in London, Museum Folkwang in Essen and Museum der Art Moderne in Salzburg, among others.

Sponsors/Partners

Tina Barney: Photographs is generously underwritten by L. Kyle Roberts.