NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
March 6, 2008
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Ann Dee Lee
Public Information Director
Oklahoma Arts Council
(405) 521-2931
anndee@arts.ok.gov
DAVID HALPERN’S PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT
COMES TO THE STATE CAPITOL
Oklahoma City, OK -- David Halpern describes himself as a photographer, teacher and author making every day a learning experience; every image an opportunity to liberate traditional perceptions.
His photography exhibit, New Perceptions of Reality, will be on display in the first floor of the North Gallery at the State Capitol from March 10th through May 4th. Curated by the Oklahoma Arts Council, the North Gallery is devoted to Oklahoma’s finest photographers and is open daily from 8:30-5:00.
As a landscape photographer for more than a half-century, Halpern says he is motivated by an awareness that all environments change in time with the impact of public use, commercial exploitation and natural phenomena. “I have always tried to show viewers of my photographs a natural world about which I care deeply and which I believe is worth protecting and preserving. My approach is neither sermonic nor adversarial; I prefer to let the images speak for themselves.”
Perhaps best known for two award winning editions of Tulsa Art Deco, he has recently authored Pilgrim Eye, a self-revealing chronicle and collection of images.
He has served eleven times as a National Park Artist-in-Residence: at Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park and Black Canyon of Gunnison, Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, Glacier National Park in Montana, and Acadia National Park in Maine.
Halpern was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1936. He attended the University of Missouri and, in 1958, received his B.A. degree from Vanderbilt University. His work has been exhibited at museums and galleries across the country and is in several public and private collections. In 1977, the selection of two of his photographs to hang in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, marked the first time photography had been purchased by the GSA, under its Art-in-Architecture program.
Halpern has taught at the University of Tulsa, Philbrook Museum of Art and Oklahoma State University-Okmulgee and regularly conducts workshops in landscape, architectural and digital photography. He has twice served as chair of the Visual Communications Advisory Committee for OSU-Okmulgee and is a member of the photography advisory committee of Tulsa Technology Center. He is a trustee and past President of the Board of Trustees of The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art in Tulsa, and is a life member of the American Society of Media Photographers. He was a 2004 inductee into the Tulsa Historical Society’s Hall of Fame.
From 1992-1998 an exhibition of Halpern's photographs commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the National Park Service traveled to 40 locations throughout the U.S. Entitled "By a Clearer Light," that exhibition was seen by more than 400,000 people. In 1999 it became a permanent part of the National Park Service collection and is held in the archives at Rocky Mountain National Park. David and his wife Sue live in Tulsa.
For more information, contact the Oklahoma Arts Council at (405) 521-2931 or anndee@arts.ok.gov.
ABOUT THE OKLAHOMA ARTS COUNCIL
The Oklahoma Arts Council is a state agency whose mission is to improve lives through the arts by promoting and sustaining the development of a thriving arts environment, which is essential to quality of life, education and economic vitality for all Oklahomans.
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