New exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum explores images’s means to reinforce and rework actuality

Apr, 15, 2026

Exhibitions and Special InstallationsPhotography

New exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum explores images’s means to reinforce and rework actuality

Opening in July 2026, Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography includes almost 100 objects from the Center for Creative Photography assortment that exemplify how medium evokes awe, creativeness, and innovation

PHOENIX, AZ (April 15, 2026) – This summer season, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) presents Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography, an unique exhibition exploring images’s means to affect notion. Featuring almost 100 works from the gathering of the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson, Ecstatic Time presents pictures spanning almost the complete historical past of the medium, together with nonetheless lifes to time-lapse and astronomical imagery, that reveal the transformative, experimental, and eccentric nature of images. The exhibition celebrates the 20-year anniversary of the landmark partnership between Phoenix Art Museum and CCP, established via funding by Mr. and Mrs. John R. Norton to deliver vibrant images exhibitions comprising works from the Center’s unparalleled collections to new and bigger audiences. Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography will likely be on view at PhxArt from July 29, 2026, via January 3, 2027.

“Phoenix Art Museum is proud to present Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Norton agreement that formalized our shared commitment to engaging our audiences with exemplary works spanning the history of photography,”stated Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Museum’sSybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum and coordinating curator of the exhibition’s PhxArt presentation. “This enduring collaboration has allowed our institutions to bring extraordinary works from the CCP collection to our community while advancing a deeper understanding of photography as an evolving, experimental, and transformative medium. Ecstatic Time reflects the strength of that partnership, offering audiences the opportunity to reflect on the boundless creative possibilities of the photographic medium.”

Although typically credited with capturing actuality, images additionally has the facility to disclose, rework, and defamiliarize its topics, augmenting actuality quite than reproducing it precisely because it seems. Ecstatic Time takes its title from the movie theorist Hollis Frampton, who proposed that pictures allow viewers to entry what he known as “ecstatic time,” an expertise distinct from historic or clock time. Derived from the Ancient Greek ékstasis, which means “to stand outside oneself,” the time period displays how pictures droop their topics from the continual circulation of lived expertise. The pictures on view encourage viewers to attend extra carefully, opening entry to deeper realities beneath the floor of on a regular basis notion.

“The Center for Creative Photography’s partnership with Phoenix Art Museum is an innovative model for collection sharing, one that allows the CCP to fulfill its mission by engaging audiences beyond our location on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson,” stated Todd Tubutis, the Director of the Center for Creative Photography. “We are delighted to celebrate 20 years of a wonderful institutional collaboration with the opening of Ecstatic Time, and look forward to many more engaging photography exhibitions in the Norton Gallery for years to come.”

Ecstatic Time options roughly 100 objects from the CCP’s assortment, together with surprising treasures by canonical figures resembling Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, exemplifying course of experimentation and puzzling or playful subject material and demonstrating the breadth and inventiveness of artistic images. Spanning the total historical past of the medium from the nineteenth century to the current, the exhibition locations specific emphasis on early Twentieth-century works, inspecting images’s advanced relationship with time via examples of flash images, nonetheless lifes, time-lapse imagery and astronomical pictures, together with pictures that seize phenomena invisible to the bare eye. Collectively, the works evoke a cupboard of curiosities, underscoring images’s capability for visible alchemy and experimentation.

Ecstatic Time is organized in 4 thematic sections.

• Awake and Dreaming brings collectively surreal and enigmatic 20^th-century pictures, orienting viewers to the transformative nature of digital camera imaginative and prescient and methods like flash that freeze moments in time. Artists featured right here embrace Ilse Bing, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Kozo Miyoshi, and Garry Winogrand.
• The Thing Itself presents a sprawling wall of nonetheless lifes that amplify the presence of their topics, echoing a “cabinet of curiosities.” Visitors will spot photos by figures from Harold Edgerton and Edward Weston to Masahisa Fukase and Abelardo Morell.
• Out of this World options astronomical imagery, together with photo voltaic eclipses (together with a picture of an eclipse captured by Ansel Adams) and a picture recorded by NASA’s Mars Pathfinder rover, highlighting how the medium has given us entry to faraway or invisible subject material.
• Incisions in History / Segments of Eternity presents works that forge reverberations between previous and current, together with conceptual works by artists like Hiroshi Sugimoto and Lew Thomas that study images’s relationship to time and a set of 19^th-century pictures that look again at earlier eras.

“Ecstatic Time brings together works that remind us how endlessly surprising photography can be,” stated Emilia Mickevicius, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography, who devised the exhibition for PhxArt. “My point of departure was a database group of unusual objects I’d been maintaining since starting my position three years ago. Every time I came across a particularly striking picture in the storage vault that startled or delighted me in some way, I’d add it to the group—and eventually it dawned on me: what if this was the basis for an entire show? Rather than offering a chronological survey of the medium, the resulting exhibition invites viewers to encounter an unusual group of photographs that delight, puzzle and disrupt our sense of time and perception. These pictures encourage us to slow down, look closely and experience photography not just as a transparent record of the world, but as a medium capable of wonder, imagination, and experimentation.”

High-resolution images for Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography might be downloaded here. Torequest interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at press@phxart.org and kaylee.weyrauch@phxart.org.  

About the Exhibition

Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography is co-organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. The exhibition is curated by Emilia Mickevicius, PhD, the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography. All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, based by The Opatrny Family Foundation with extra main assist supplied by Joan Cremin.

Admission is free for Museum Members and youth aged 5 and youthful. Entrance into the exhibition is included basically admission for the general public. Visitors might also take pleasure in decreased admission to the exhibition throughout voluntary-donation instances on Wednesdays from 3 – 8 pm, made potential by SRP and City of Phoenix. For a full breakdown of basic admission costs and hours, see phxart.org/go to/.

About Phoenix Art Museum

Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged tens of millions of tourists with the artwork of our area and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates areas of change and belonging for all audiences via dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with artwork. Each 12 months, 300,000 company on common interact with critically acclaimed nationwide and worldwide exhibitions and the Museum’s assortment of greater than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, fashionable, modern artwork, and style design, together with vibrant images exhibitions made potential via the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography on the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt additionally presents dwell performances, excellent examples of world cinema, arts-education applications and workshops, a month-to-month live-music sequence, and extra for the neighborhood. To be taught extra about Phoenix Art Museum, go to phxart.org, or name 602.257.1880.

About the Center for Creative Photography (CCP):

Founded in 1975, the Center for Creative Photography is the biggest establishment in North America dedicated to the analysis and exhibition of images. At the guts of CCP’s holdings are greater than 300 archives of photographers, students, galleries, and organizations, complemented by an unparalleled assortment of some 120,000 high quality prints. In addition, CCP focuses on preserving and stewarding its holdings via a strong conservation program and digital imaging unit. The Center owns and manages copyrights for a number of archive artists and helps licensing and picture file supply to publishers, authors, educators, and filmmakers worldwide. As a unit of Arizona Arts on the University of Arizona, the Center maintains a strong calendar of free exhibitions and applications for the general public, serves college students and college via curricular engagements, and awards a number of worldwide analysis fellowships yearly.

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