Sheldon Presents Gallery Talk 4/10 By Photographer William Earle Williams

The Sheldon Art Galleries presents a gallery talk in conjunction with the exhibition Uncovering the Path to Freedom: Photographs of Underground Railroad Sites by William Earle Williams, February 19 - May 15, 2010, in the Gallery of Photography. Gallery Talk: Saturday, April 10 at 11 a.m., photographer William Earle Williams will give an overview of his photographic work, Gallery of Photography, admission free.

William Earle Williams has been photographing Underground Railroad sites for more than 25 years. His photography career began while he was an undergraduate at Hamilton College , in Clinton , NY . In 2001, he discoverEd Hamilton 's abolitionist history, and took a special interest in Underground Railroad sites in that part of New York State . In 2003, Williams received an artist's residency at Light Work, in Syracuse , New York , which provided him with the opportunity to make an extended document of sites in Central Upstate New York. In that same year, Williams received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled him to do extensive research on additional sites around the country. Since then, Williams has visited sites in Indiana , Ohio , Pennsylvania , Maryland , Mississippi , West Virginia , Eastern Ontario in Canada and many others to continue this document of powerful yet sensitive photographs of these important sites.

An educator, curator and photographer, Williams' photographic work has focused on sites of African-American history and slave culture. He is Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor of Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts and Curator of Photography at Haverford College in Pennsylvania , where he has taught since 1978. His works can be found in the Permanent Collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. In addition to receiving a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2003, he has also received grants from the Ford Foundation, a Pew Fellowship in the arts and numerous others.

Gallery hours are: Tuesdays, Noon - 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, Noon - 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. and one hour prior to Sheldon performances and during intermission. Admission is free. For more information on the exhibition visit the galleries' website at www.thesheldon.org/galleries.asp. This exhibition is made possible in part by the David S. Millstone Arts Foundation and John and Yvette Dubinsky.

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