Wichita Art Museum Features The Migrant Project

Friday, 05 May 2006 10:05

Wichita, KS - The Migrant Project: Photographs of Contemporary California Farm Workers is a photojournalistic portrait detailing the lives and struggles of today's migrant farm workers. Photographer, writer and filmmaker Rick Nahmias captured the images in over four dozen towns across the state of California during the 2002-3 harvest. The workers’ stories are told through label text that is written in both English and Spanish.

This exhibition is made possible in Wichita by the City of Wichita, the Kansas Association of Migrant Directors (KAMD), the Sam and Rie Bloomfield Foundation, Emprise Bank and the Friends of the Wichita Art Museum.

The Art Museum learned of Nahmias’ work through the KAMD-a group consisting mainly of public school teachers devoted to migrant and English as-a-second-language students. The Association approached the museum about hosting the exhibition after they secured Nahmias as the guest speaker at their annual convention in Wichita.

“This exhibition provides the Wichita Art Museum an outstanding opportunity to partner with another regional cultural/educational group and to exhibit art depicting a society unknown to many of us in this region,” explains Stephen Gleissner, Wichita Art Museum chief curator.

Though images of the farm workers of the 1930s and 40s are now iconic to many Americans, this mosaic of images and bilingual text aims to capture the rarely seen contemporary faces of this mostly invisible and cast-off population, as well as speak about more general issues surrounding the human cost of feeding America.

The Migrant Project depicts everything from family life, culture, children and pesticides, to the search for housing, work, health care, and the scraping together of community. By providing these and other human details it aims to foster a greater sense of empathy with today's farm workers as well as provide a humanistic lens through which to understand this, the poorest and most consistently exploited segment of our society.

Gleissner describes Nahmias is an emerging artist who participates in a venerable tradition that includes Goya, Daumier, and Degas in Europe, and Robert Henri, George Grosz, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Ben Shahn in America – a tradition that connects us with lives and conditions hitherto unknown to us (or to which we would rather avert our gaze). He says, “Nahmias’ work compares with that of his forefathers by conveying a social message that deserves our attention and consideration.”

Rick Nahmias (b. 1965) is a photographer, writer, and filmmaker whose work has been shown across the US, Europe, and Asia. He creates special photo-based projects of all sizes for corporations, foundations, non-profits, and cause-driven organizations. He also shoots freelance assignments with an emphasis on editorial, travel and food subjects.

His images and writing have been profiled and published in newspapers, magazines, journals and news weeklies ranging from The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register, to The Advocate and California Homes. His work has been presented on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, is part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, and resides in several private and public collections across the country. He was honored by Kodak as one of six up-and-coming filmmakers at the Sundance Film Festival.

Through benefits and print sales, "The Migrant Project" has helped raise thousands of dollars for numerous non-profit and charitable organizations including The Dolores Huerta Foundation, California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc., El Faro Orphanage (Tijuana), Lideres Campesinas, American Friends Service Committee (Stockton), Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, The Cesar Chavez Foundation, and Kern AIDS Lifeline.

Exhibition on view in the Kurdian Gallery May 21, 2006 – August 13, 2006. The Wichita Art Museum opened in 1935. It is home to The Roland P. Murdock Collection, one of the premier collections of American Art in the country.

Visit The Wichita Art Museum at : http://www.wichitaartmuseum.org