Helios: Eadweard Muybridge In a Time of Change

Washington Flyer features Curator Philip Brookman and Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change

Best known for his groundbreaking studies of animal and human locomotion, 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge was also an innovative landscape artist and pioneer of documentary subjects. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change is the first retrospective exhibition to examine all aspects of Muybridge’s art.

Structured in a series of thematic sections, the exhibition includes numerous vintage photographs, albums, stereographs, lantern slides, glass negatives and positives, camera equipment, patent models, Zoopraxiscope discs, proof prints, notes, books, and other ephemera. Over 300 objects created between 1858 and 1893 are brought together for the first time from numerous international collections. Muybridge’s only surviving Zoopraxiscope—an apparatus he designed in 1879 to project motion pictures—will also be on view.

Organized by Corcoran chief curator and head of research Philip Brookman, the exhibition will also travel to Tate Britain in London from September 8, 2010 through January 16, 2011, and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from February 26 through June 7, 2011. A catalogue of the exhibition, with new essays by Brookman, Marta Braun, Andy Grundberg, Corey Keller, and Rebecca Solnit, will be published Steidl.

Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change is made possible through the generous support of American Express and the Trellis Fund. Additional support was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and Deane and Paul Shatz. The accompanying catalogue was made possible, in part, by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.