Photographs from the Bank of America Collection” on the The Hudson River Museum

  Dorothea Lange (American, 1895–1965) Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936 (printed 1967). Gelatin silver print. Bank of America Collection. Courtesy of Hudson River Museum.

 

By RUBEN NATAL-SAN MIGUEL January thirty first, 2026

The Hudson River Museum (hrm.org) has lengthy been on my record of locations to go to. On the night of January 29, 2025, within the depths of winter, the opening reception for Modern Women / Modern Vision: Photographs from the Bank of America Collection (on view January 30 – May 10, 2026) gave me the proper purpose to lastly make the journey. My neighbor Anna Lustberg talked about that her sister, Arin Lustberg, works on the museum as Manager of Members & Member Events, so we hopped on Metro-North from one hundred and twenty fifth Street. A brief journey later, we arrived.

The museum itself is great, and the reception was thoughtfully executed — together with cheeses from women-owned corporations, a element that subtly strengthened the exhibition’s feminist framework. The setting of the Hudson River Museum is equally spectacular; I’m already wanting ahead to returning throughout sunlight hours to absorb the environment.

The workers had been heat and welcoming all through the night, together with Samantha Hoover (Deputy Director), Laura Vookles (Chair, Curatorial Department), Shilpi Chandra (Assistant Curator), Jeana Wunderlich (Assistant Director of Development), Laura Owens (Development Officer), Nancy DeNatale, together with quite a few patrons, trustees, and workers members who made the occasion really feel each celebratory and intimate.
 

 Sandy Skoglund (American, b. 1946), Revenge of the Goldfish, 1981. Cibachrome print (version 7 of 30). Bank of America Collection. Courtesy of Hudson River Museum. © Sandy Skoglund.

 

Modern Women / Modern Vision

From the museum’s wall textual content:

“Since pictures’s inception in 1839, ladies have stood amongst its inventive and technological pioneers, on the forefront of each photographic motion and elegance. Iconic works by Diane Arbus, Graciela Iturbide, Barbara Kruger, Dorothea Lange, Cindy Sherman, and Carrie Mae Weems, amongst many others, inform the dynamic story of pictures’s evolution throughout six thematic sections: Modernist Innovators; Documentary Photography and the New Deal; the Photo League; Modern Masters; Exploring the Environment; and the Global Contemporary Lens.

Women performed an integral position in framing the fashionable expertise via the digicam’s lens. From 1900 onward, they navigated sweeping social, political, and financial adjustments, more and more utilizing pictures as a way of inventive expression, monetary independence, and private freedom. By pushing past the restrictions imposed on ladies’s roles and conduct, early trailblazers helped set up pictures as each a significant artwork kind and a strong social doc. They usually pursued topics ignored by their male counterparts, increasing the medium’s scope and reshaping its cultural significance for generations to come back.”

 

Tina Barney (American, b. 1945), Father & Sons, 1996 (printed 2006). Color coupler print. Bank of America Collection. Courtesy of Hudson River Museum.

 

 Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954), Untitled Film Still #50, 1979 (printed 1989). Gelatin silver print. Bank of America Collection. Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Hudson River Museum.

 

 Graciela Iturbide (Mexican, b. 1942), Fiesta de las Velas (Festival of the Candles), Juchitán, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1986 (printed c. 1992). Gelatin silver print. Bank of America Collection. © Graciela Iturbide. Courtesy of Hudson River Museum.

 

 Berenice Abbott (American, 1898–1991), Night View, New York, 1932 (printed later). Gelatin silver print. Bank of America Collection. Courtesy of Hudson River Museum.

 

 Laura Vookles, Chair of the Curatorial Department on the Hudson River Museum, in entrance of works by Barbara Kruger. Photo by Ruben Natal-San Miguel.
 

 Shilpi Chandra, Assistant Curator on the Hudson River Museum, in entrance of Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother. Photo by Ruben Natal-San Miguel.

There are many extra highly effective pictures on this exhibition that collectively hint historical past whereas highlighting how ladies artists defied obstacles, persevered, and in the end remodeled a male-dominated discipline. Seeing now-canonical works by Diane Arbus, Carrie Mae Weems, and others on this context is each grounding and energizing.

This is a fantastically curated and elegantly put in exhibition — refined, considerate, and visually hanging. In difficult occasions, it presents not simply historic perspective but additionally a reminder of the enduring drive of ladies’s inventive imaginative and prescient. I might say far more, however it’s higher to expertise it firsthand. Highly really helpful.