Frank Goodyear To Lead Tour Of ’Mariana Cook: Faces Of Science’ At The Nas

Washington – Frank Goodyear, assistant curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, will lead a gallery tour of “Mariana Cook: Faces of Science” on Thursday, June 21, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. This free event will take place in Room 100 of the National Academies’ Keck Center, located at 500 Fifth St., N.W., Washington, D.C. Doors open at 5 p.m.; a photo ID is required for admittance.



In this body of work, Mariana Cook turns her camera on some of the most prominent men and women of the scientific community, with the purpose of “humanizing” these great scientists.



The text that accompanies each portrait was either written by the subject or pulled from interviews conducted by Cook, in which the photographer asked the scientists to speak about themselves. What kind of childhoods did they have? How did they first become interested in science? What psychological needs may have drawn them to and been satisfied by their work? Why did they choose their particular field of research? In response, some concentrated more on the scientific query; others, on the personal. There is often a combination of the two. The portraits together with the texts offer a look into the humanity of an extraordinary group of people. Their intellectual curiosity, wish to help mankind, and ability to work with others to accomplish their tasks serve as a testament to a unique confluence of remarkable human qualities.



Frank Goodyear has been the assistant curator of photographs at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery since July 2001. He did his undergraduate work at Princeton University and completed a Ph.D. in American studies at the University of Texas at Austin in May 1998. Goodyear’s doctoral dissertation considered the relationship between landscape photography and the birth of the commercial tourist trade in 19th-century America. In addition to publishing several articles based on research from this project, he is also the author of “Red Cloud: Photographs of a Lakota Chief” (University of Nebraska Press, 2003), a book that re-examines the life of this important tribal diplomat through an investigation of more than 130 photographic portraits. Goodyear is an affiliated faculty member in the department of American studies at George Washington University, where he teaches graduate classes in American visual studies, the history of photography, and Native American history. At the Portrait Gallery, he is currently conducting research on the career of Zaida Ben-Yusuf (1869-1933), a little-known, yet important New York photographer whose Fifth Avenue studio attracted the artistic, literary, and theatrical elite of her day. Goodyear is also currently developing an exhibition with an accompanying catalogue on portraits of contemporary Hip Hop musicians by photographer David Scheinbaum.



“Faces of Science” is on view at the Keck Center through July 30 by appointment only. Call 202-334-2436 to make a viewing appointment. The exhibition will then move to the National Academy of Sciences’ headquarters at 2100 C St., N.W., Washington, D.C., where it will be on public view from Aug. 1 through Sept. 30, 2007.