Join Cay Sophie Rabinowitz ’89 and the New York Alumni Chapter for an exclusive look at 1968 from the Bev Grant Archive, presented by OSMOS and featuring a discussion with the photographer herself. Focusing on seminal political events of 1968—“the year that shattered America”—this exhibition traces the first-hand experiences of Grant on the frontlines of the struggles of the Women’s Movement and other progressive movements of the time.

Read more about the exhibition in The New Yorker.

Doors open at 6pm.

RSVP by October 25 to alumni@reed.edu.

About the exhibition

1968 from the Bev Grant Archive opened on September 7, 2018, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the demonstration against the Miss America Beauty Pageant. Grant’s camera bore witness to this watershed protest that launched the nascent feminist movement in the U.S. while also commencing her career as a documentary photographer and filmmaker. While Bev Grant participated in several grassroots political movements over the years, her vast archive of photographic negatives has lain dormant for decades and was previously unknown. Privileging her career as an accomplished musician, Grant had taken a long hiatus from photography and film work until very recently.

Curated by Alison M. Gingeras and Cay-Sophie Rabinowitz ’89, this exhibition seeks to reinstate Bev Grant as a key figure in the American social documentary tradition. Assembling these iconic images of this chapter of the history of the American Left serves as a crucial reminder of the collective power of protest and social action at this fragile moment of our democracy.
 

About the artist

Bev Grant is an activist, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and musician who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Michigan and raised in Portland, Oregon, Grant moved to New York City in the early 1960s as the wife of a jazz musician. She worked as a secretary and supported her husband first, then moved in with another jazz musician and supported his career. A victim of domestic abuse (both physical and psychological), Grant left him after two years in 1966, shortly after he threw away the book she was reading, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. This was just as the fervor of women’s liberation and anti-war sentiment was coming to the fore. She began attending anti-war demonstrations in 1967 and attended an SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) conference at Princeton University, including a "Women's Liberation" workshop led by Pam (Chude) Allen, who invited her to join a consciousness raising group on the Lower East Side. Having settled on the Lower East Side, Grant immediately began attending and ultimately becoming a participant in numerous significant protest actions of the period. She began to employ her recently purchased Pentax 35mm camera to record what was clearly a historic time of political action. She joined a newly formed political documentary collective called New York Newsreel (later renamed Third World Newsreel) and began to deploy her activist experiences and documentarian eye as a photographer and filmmaker. She also contributed photos to Liberation News Service, an underground press service that distributed images and written word to the numerous political newspapers throughout the country.
 

About our host

Cay Sophie Rabinowitz ’89 has been Senior Editor of Parkett and Fantom and Artistic Director of Art Basel; she has also been on the fine art faculty of Columbia University and Parsons. Born and raised in Virginia, Rabinowitz settled in Berlin for a decade before making her way back to New York City where she currently directs OSMOS, an independent editorial and curatorial project located in the East Village storefront that was once "Schwab's Tavern" frequented by international radicals, such as Emma Goldman.  Rabinowitz has authored numerous monographs and essays about modern culture and contemporary art. This year she authored two books, Leslie Hewitt (2018) and Good Enough: Eileen Quinlan (2018), both published by OSMOS and distributed by D.A.P. / artbook.com. In 2011, when most of the publishing elite gave up printing, OSMOS Magazine launched itself as an in-print-only art magazine about the use and abuse of photography. A recognized art world insider, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz is known for her highly professional yet deeply personal approach.