2024 William Collins Smith Auburn Award for Advancing American Art: Binh Danh

Selections from the Advancing American Art Collection featured in People at Work, on view at The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. Photo: Mike Cortez.

William “Bill” Collins Smith (1957–2023) Chair emeritus, Museum Advisory Board Clint Herring (b. 1962), William Collins Smith. Courtesy of Monica Smith.

LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Dear friends, It is with great respect the museum introduces the William Collins Smith Auburn Award for Advancing American Art, named in memory of a beloved friend and colleague whose steadfast dedication to The Jule and its mission left an indelible mark on our institution.

Bill Smith, as I knew him, believed sincerely in the power of art to encourage understanding and bridge differences. He helped shepherd The Jule in our mission to enhance the Auburn experience, advance creative scholarship and serve the broader state of Alabama, and it is fitting that this award bears his name alongside our founding collection of American modernist paintings. As a tribute to both his legacy and the Julia and Albert Smith Foundation for their enduring support, we are profoundly honored to present this inaugural award.

This $25,000 award recognizes American artists and artistic scholars whose work encapsulates the same principles reflected in the 1946 Advancing American Art exhibition: creativity, experimentation and innovation – the cornerstones of artistic endeavor that remind us that art is both a reflection of our world and a catalyst for growth. Our inaugural recipient, Binh Danh, embodies these guiding principles.

Bringing a new perspective to traditional photography, Danh’s work challenges conventions about identity through nature and landscapes, inviting viewers to take another look at the known and familiar to discover the new.

We extend our deepest gratitude to the esteemed jurors from our peer institutions who lent their expertise and insight to the selection process. Their invaluable contributions and support underscore the collaborative spirit that drives the arts.

As we celebrate this momentous occasion, let us build on the principles of creativity, experimentation and innovation to further inform the work on the museum and university. Let us also look forward to the many ways in which Binh Danh and future award recipients will impact Auburn and push the boundaries of artistic expression.

Thank you for joining us in this celebration of excellence and for your ongoing support of The Jule.

Cindi Malinck

ABOUT THE JULE Located at a nationally ranked land-grant institution committed to interdisciplinary research and an elevated student experience, The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University advances meaningful creative scholarship, outreach and education through the study and stewardship of art objects. Since 2003, the museum has cared for the over 3,000 objects that comprise the university art collection, grounded in American modernism and spanning the 17th to 21st centuries. With regularly changing exhibitions, artist residencies and scholarly forums, The Jule champions art and cultural inquiry across disciplines to instill lifelong learning, improve relationships and cultural understanding, and inspire curiosity and wellbeing. Admission is free. Visit jcsm.auburn.edu for more information.

Students at Night at the Museum look at selections from the Advancing American Art Collection featured in People at Work, on view at The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. Photos: Stew Milne.

ABOUT THE ARTIST BINH DANH reconfigures traditional photographic techniques and processes in unconventional ways to delve into the connections between history, identity and place. Their reflective surfaces enable people of all backgrounds to see themselves as a part of the beauty of the American landscape. His work has been collected by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the San José Museum of Art, among others. “Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging” was the inaugural recipient of the Minami Book Grant for Asian American Visual Artists at Radius Books in 2023. He is an associate professor of art at San José State University.

Courtesy of the artist. | Photo: Erin de Jauregui

COVER:

El Capitan, Yosemite, June 20, 2014 Daguerreotype 12 x 10 inches

All images courtesy of the artist. © Binh Danh

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Lower Yosemite Fall, 2016 Daguerreotype 12 x 10 inches

2 Military Foliage #59, 2010 Chlorophyll print and resin 14¾ x 10 x 1 inches

3 Found Buddha, 2008 Chlorophyll print and resin 11 x 9 inches

4 Yosemite Falls, Yosemite, CA, 2012 Daguerreotype 6.5 x 8.5 inches

5 Yosemite Falls, 2024 Daguerreotype 10 x 12 inches

6 Upper and Lower Yosemite Fall (#2), 2024 Daguerreotype 12 x 10 inches

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Cathedral Rocks and Cathedral Spires, Yosemite, California, 2012 Daguerreotype 6.5 x 8.5 inches

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Yosemite Falls, May 21, 2011 Daguerreotype 6.5 x 8.5 inches

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Lower Yosemite Fall, 2012 Daguerreotype 8.5 x 6.5 inches

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10 Yosemite Falls, April 15, 2012 Daguerreotype 6.5 x 8.5 inches

11 Rock on Merced River, Yosemite, CA, 2012 Daguerreotype 6.5 x 8.5 inches

12 Lower Yosemite Falls, Yosemite, CA, June 20, 2014 Daguerreotype 12 x 10 inches

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THE 2024 SELECTION PROCESS Auburn University’s art collection originates in the Advancing American Art exhibition, developed and traveled by the U.S. State Department in 1946 to publicly promote freedom of expression and creativity. Two years after the abrupt recall of this internationally significant exhibition, Auburn acquired nearly one-third of the objects and has stewarded them ever since. Reflecting this continued commitment to centering the significance of American art, the William Collins Smith Auburn Award for Advancing American Art aims to recognize field-defining contributions by an American artist or scholar-practitioner in the art/museum sphere.

For the inaugural year, the museum administration selected jurors based on their career strengths and expertise, charging them with identifying artists whose work exemplifies the precepts of the original Advancing American Art exhibition, including individualism, creativity and inventiveness, freedom of expression, experimentation and imagination.

The nominated artists, all citizens of the United States or permanent residents, created substantial bodies of work and featured in prominent solo or group exhibitions. Further considerations included the notable museum collections holding their art, publication portfolios and press coverage. Eligibility extended to all visual art mediums, including photography, film/video, new media and installation.

Jurors convened to discuss the nominations and, facilitated by museum staff, reached a unanimous consensus in their recommendation to leadership.

“Of particular note is his invention of the chlorophyll printing process, a cameraless photographic technique that transfers images to leaves and other organic material through photosynthesis.” – David Odo “[Danh] has developed a new photographic process that contributes to the development of this technology and uses it to create thoughtprovoking works that prompt us to critically reflect on American history and its global impact.” – Janet Dees “[Danh’s] work so profoundly resonates with the award’s values.”

– Isra El-Beshir

ABOUT THE JURORS JANET DEES is the assistant director of arts at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Previously, she was the Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University; a museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and a curator at SITE Santa Fe. Dees has curated numerous exhibitions, including A Site of Struggle: Making Meaning of Anti-Black Violence in American Art and Visual Culture (2021), for which she received a 2018 Curatorial Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Her 2015 exhibition, Unsuspected Possibilities: Leonardo Drew, Sarah Oppenheimer, Marie Watt, was supported by an Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Dees’ work has been featured in publications from the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the National Museum of the American Indian, amongst others. She holds a B.A. in art history and African/African American studies from Fordham University and a M.A. in art history from the University of Delaware.

ISRA EL-BESHIR is the director of Art Museums and Galleries at Washington and Lee University, overseeing the Reeves Museum of Ceramics, Watson Galleries and a collection of 15,000 fine and decorative arts objects.

Previously, she served as the founding director of the Illinois Arts Station, a community arts program of Illinois State University; development consultant for the premier journal, Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora; and as the curator of education and public programming at the Arab American National Museum. She has consulted on programs, exhibitions and interpretations at the Detroit Institute of the Arts, Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. El-Beshir has served on the Advisory Council of Held in Trust, a three-year cooperative agreement between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation, aimed at evaluating the state of preservation and conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in the United States. Currently serving on the board of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries, she holds her B.A. in international business, marketing and Arabic from Grand Valley State University and her M.A. in cultural anthropology from Wayne State University.

DAVID ODO is the director of the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia. Previously, he was division head and director of academic and public programs at the Harvard Art Museums and the Bradley Assistant Curator of Academic Affairs at the Yale University Art Gallery. He is affiliate faculty at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, and research affiliate at Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Odo has lectured, published and curated exhibitions related to his main research interest in photography and focused much of his museum work on teaching with art collections across academic disciplines and expanding curricular and co-curricular learning and professional development opportunities for students and early career professionals. His board memberships include the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology, National Museum of History, Smithsonian Institution and Lifelong Labs, Hong Kong. He has also held numerous research fellowships, including at Harvard University, the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the University of Tokyo. Odo received his doctoral degree in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Oxford and his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in East Asian studies.

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