This month, our MFA students were honored by a series of studio visits and enthralling conversations with visiting artist Ann Fessler. Fessler, a professor of photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, has an illustrious career spanning many disciplines and reaching into the sphere of social justice. Her book The Girls Who Went Away, chronicling the effects of a closed-adoption system in the American era prior to Roe v. Wade, was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, and a recipient of the Ballard Book Prize. Fessler’s 2011 documentary film, A Girl Like Her, explores the subject with poignancy and strength, combining interview footage with pop-cultural and educational newsreels from the 1950’s and 60’s, when women were compelled to bring “illegitimate” pregnancies to term in maternity homes, and to surrender their children under a shroud of secrecy and shame.
From Fessler’s bio: “She has spent the last twenty-five years bringing the first-person narratives and hidden history of adoption into the public sphere through her writing and visual works… Her artist’s books and works on paper are in collections that include the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum for Contemporary Art, Chicago; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Fessler has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including a prestigious Radcliffe Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard; film production grants from the LEF Foundation and the Rhode Island Foundation; visual arts grants from Art Matters, New York; The National Endowment for the Arts; multiple grants from both the Maryland and Rhode Island State Arts Councils and a humanities grant from the Rhode Island State Council for the Humanities.
“She has been honored for her original research on mothers who lost children for adoption from both the Museum of Motherhood in New York and St. John’s University where she was awarded the 2014 Adoptee Trailblazer Award given annually to an adoptee whose work inspires and is foundational for professionals in adoption and foster care work. Fessler has also been honored as a distinguished alumna of both her high school and her graduate school, the University of Arizona, where she received the Harold Jones Distinguished Alumni Award.”
Fessler spoke in MCAD’s Auditorium 150 as part of the President’s Lecture Series, then generously made the trek to our MFA studios to share her insights with our students. Thank you, Ann!
For more information:
Ann Fessler
The Girls Who Went Away
A Girl Like Her
MCAD President’s Lecture Series
RISD Photography
