The Muscarelle Museum of Art at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is showing 'Photography From 1870 to Tomorrow: Pioneers and Innovators', an ongoing exhibition drawn from its permanent collection that opened on 2 June 2026.
The selection covers more than 150 years of the medium, from 1870 to 2022, and brings together photographs made with a wide range of techniques and devoted to very different subjects. According to the museum, its photography collection has been assembled largely through gifts from alumni and individual supporters, and it continues to grow through ongoing acquisitions.
Photographers named by the museum include pioneers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Curtis and Carleton Watkins, together with Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, Margaret Bourke-White and Roy DeCarava, and contemporary artists including Markus Brunetti, Cara Romero, Adrián Fernández, Daisuke Yokota and Alison Rossiter.
The museum has recently drawn attention to Fernández's 'Untitled No. 18' (2019), an archival pigment inkjet print acquired in 2023 with funds from the Board of Visitors Muscarelle Museum of Art Endowment. Born in Havana, Fernández uses photography to document and interpret cultural identity, drawing on imagery, symbols and visual traditions to examine how societies represent their histories, ideologies and shared identities. In the museum's description, his work treats images as more than records of a single moment: as symbols that hold memory and carry ideas across time and place.
The exhibition is on view in Williamsburg with no announced closing date.
