Museum report·Cambridge, Massachusetts
Harvard Art Museums Question Postwar American Myth in Photography Survey
Harvard Art Museums are showing The Way We Never Were through May 9, 2027, postwar commercial photographs that reveal the constructed myths of American life.
Harvard Art Museums are showing The Way We Never Were: The American Professional Photographers Collection, on view through May 9, 2027. Drawn from an archive of more than 20,000 photographs assembled in the 1970s by sociologist Barbara Norfleet, the exhibition examines how commercial photographers constructed an idealized vision of postwar America. The roughly 70 photographs on display include wedding portraits, Tupperware parties and homecoming scenes that masked segregation, Cold War anxiety and rigid gender roles. Curators Audrey Sands and Madison Brown frame the show as a prompt to look critically at how images shaped a narrow idea of American belonging.
