Andrea Wolk Rager is the Jesse Hauk Shera Assistant Professor in the art history department. Photo courtesy of the Department of Art History and Art.

Barbara Tannenbaum, curator of photography at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Photo by Andrew McAllister.

In 2011, Andrea Wolk Rager was a visiting faculty member in Case Western Reserve’s Department of Art History and Art, and Barbara Tannenbaum was the newly appointed curator of photography at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). When they first met, they found that they had a common interest: the Pictorialist movement in European and American photography at the turn of the 20th century. The Pictorialists regarded photography as a fine art, on a par with painting and drawing, and they eagerly explored its creative and expressive possibilities.

Wolk Rager, who had recently been a postdoctoral research associate at the Yale Center for British Art, told Tannenbaum that she had been working on an exhibition featuring examples of Pictorialist photography. Tannenbaum, in turn, said that she was thinking of devoting a show to American Pictorialists, especially Clarence H. White (1871-1925), an influential photographer from Newark, Ohio, whose body of work is amply represented in the CMA’s collection.

It wasn’t long before Wolk Rager and Tannenbaum decided to join forces. In fall 2012, Wolk Rager offered a graduate seminar in which students researched Pictorialist photographs owned by the museum and discussed approaches to exhibiting this material. Tannenbaum, who is also an adjunct faculty member in CWRU’s art history department, served as guest scholar for the seminar and mentored the students, helping to guide their exploration of the CMA’s major collection of Pictorialist photography.

While the seminar was under way, Wolk Rager and Tannenbaum began formulating plans for Shadows and Dreams: Pictorialist Photography in America, an exhibition that opened at the CMA in fall 2015. In previous decades, partnerships of this kind were not unusual, but it had been years since a faculty member and a curator had worked together on a show at the museum. Now, Tannenbaum says, “we were rediscovering the joys of collaboration.”

Julia McCune Flory and Phoebe Flory, 1915. Clarence H. White (American, 1871–1925). Platinum print; 24.1 x 18.8 cm. Gift of John Flory, Elizabeth Flory Kelly, and Phoebe Flory 1980.162.

The exhibition also benefited from the contributions of master’s student Victoria Hepburn (GRS ’16), who served as a research assistant. Hepburn took a special interest in the career of Julia McCune Flory, one of White’s favorite models, who became a book illustrator, theater educator and co-founder of the Cleveland Play House. As a result, Hepburn wound up curating a concurrent exhibition about McCune Flory for the Department of Special Collections at the university’s Kelvin Smith Library. She is now a doctoral student in art history at Yale University.

In retrospect, it is clear that Wolk Rager and Tannenbaum were ahead of their time. Today, as a result of enhancements to the doctoral program funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, joint projects involving faculty members and curators are no longer a rarity. And a $15 million gift commitment from Nancy and Joseph Keithley will ensure that such projects continue to shape art history education at Case Western Reserve and the museum experience for visitors to the CMA.

“I am delighted that future collaborations will receive significant support,” says Wolk Rager, who is now the Jesse Hauk Shera Assistant Professor in the art history department. “Barbara and I hope to work together again, along with our graduate students, to develop other exhibitions.”