Lecture Halls and Gallery Walls: Art Photography at Institutions of Higher-Education During the 1960s and 1970s in North America

This paper explores the impact that North American university and college photography programs had on the reception of photography as an art form during the mid to late twentieth century. I consider this period using a networked approach that investigates the intersection between educational institutions, the museum and gallery circuit, and artist. The significant growth of photography education has been documented by Dr. William Horrell, the founder of the Printing and Photography department at Southern Illinois University. He published multiple studies on photography at institutions of higher-education from 1964 to the late 1980s. Dr. Horrell found that undergraduate enrolment in photography programs grew from less than two hundred in 1963 to nearly five thousand over the span of a decade.

Education at these institutions drew heavily upon material in their slide collections and libraries, fostering significant growth in the representation of photography. For those that had an art collection or gallery, photography became a desirable item to collect, display, and use as a didactic tool. These institutions also produced and displayed traveling photography exhibitions. After graduation, many photography students remained in the field as photographers, educators, curators, and critics. Others helped create artist-run centers, galleries, university programs, and museum collections that positioned photography as Art. By studying this epoch, I argue that universities and colleges’ understandings of the medium greatly impacted the trajectory of photography. These hubs were places of diverse and rich artistic practices that were as interconnected as they were divided.