The Addison's collection numbers over 20,000 objects. While the galleries can only accommodate a fraction of the collection, virtually the entire collection is accessible through the Museum Learning Center.

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Collection

Themes: Gender

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Artist(s): Laurie Simmons (Long Island, NY, Oct 3, 1949 - )
Title: Woman / Interior VIII from In and Around the House
Date: neg. 1976-1977, print 2002
Dimensions: 5 5/16 in. x 7 7/8 in. (13.49 cm x 20 cm)
Medium: gelatin silver print
Credit Line: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, museum purchase, 2003.18.17

This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):

Themes: Gender
Themes: MLC Portfolio: Houses and Homes

Object Information

Depicting female dolls in dollhouse interiors performing the stereotypical chores of a 1950s housewife, these images are paradoxically sentimental and critical. In describing this work Simmons has said, "I was simply trying to recreate a feeling, a mood . . . a sense of the fifties that I knew was both beautiful and lethal at the same time."
Created by the artist at the threshold of her career, these poignant and melancholy black and white photographs reflect concerns and themes—artifice and fiction, gender and identity, and memory and nostalgia—that continue to inform her work today. A formative piece within the artist’s oeuvre, it is with this pioneering series of photographs that Simmons became one of the first of a generation of artists to push the boundaries of photography into the realm of conceptual art.

Exhibition History

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Laurie Simmons: In and Around the House, Addison Gallery of American Art, 2/6/2016 - 4/17/2016

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