Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will present Wait Until Dark: Night Photography from the Collection of Jay Richard DiBiaso, an exhibition of nocturnal photographs. The exhibition will open on February 8, and it will run through July 6, 2003.

Wait Until Dark presents a range of photographs, both in color and black and white, selected from the photography collection of Jay Richard DiBiaso, Williams College Class of 1978. Wait Until Dark is organized by Patricia Hickson, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, Class of 2003, and Deborah Rothschild, Curator of Exhibitions.

"Williams College's strong reputation in the visual arts extends beyond the many museum directors and curators the school has produced, and beyond the vitality of the current art department—it is also to be found in the collections of countless alumni around the country," says Director Linda Shearer. "It is our great pleasure to be featuring these photographs from the collection of Jay DiBiaso, Class of 1978, to coincide with his class's 25th Reunion. His knowledge of and dedication to contemporary photography is formidable, and I am delighted that he is sharing his passion with WCMA. He has worked closely with Patty Hickson, who is a second year graduate student at Williams. As part of her graduate internship with curator Deborah Rothschild, she has been able to organize this exhibition."

Wait Until Dark: An Overview

The word photography comes from the Greek and means "writing with light." In the creation of night images, this definition takes on new connotations with the natural restrictions and artificial lighting conditions that the artists must necessarily manipulate after dark. The photographer's results in this milieu evoke a wide variety of sensations—pending danger, overwhelming curiosity, and profound beauty.

The photographs in Wait Until Dark stretch across a wide range of subjects. George Tice's Telephone Booth, 3 a.m., Rahway, New Jersey (1974) conveys the extraordinary stillness of a distinctly American landscape. In Case Study House #22 (1960), architectural photographer Jules Shulman captures a dramatic view of Los Angeles from a modern home of glass and steel in the Hollywood Hills. Australian photographer Michael Corridore presents an exhausting sense of perpetual motion in Vanishing Point (2001), his grid of photographs taken from a car's dashboard. The other artists included in Wait Until Dark are Lewis Baltz, Jeff Brouws, Harvey Caplin, William Grenier, Todd Hido, Michael Kenna, David Levinthal, O. Winston Link, Richard Misrach, Thomas Tulis, and Henry Wessel.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: Jonathan Cannon, Public Relations Coordinator
413.597.3178; WCMA@williams.edu