Reynolda wins first place in prestigious American Alliance of Museums publications design competition

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Oct. 7, 2019)— The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) has awarded Reynolda House Museum of American Art first place in its 2019 Museum Publications Design Competition for the museum’s innovative 2018 exhibition guide. The award was bestowed upon a 16-page tabloid newspaper created for Dorothea Lange’s America, a 2018 exhibition at the museum. Dorothea Lange’s America chronicled the hardship and heartbreak of a Depression-era generation through some of the most arresting images of the 20th century.

The guide was produced in collaboration with the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina to generate awareness about the exhibition and to shed light on important issues surrounding poverty and food insecurity as documented in Dorothea Lange’s America and still afflicting Northwest North Carolina today. Reynolda distributed more than 47,000 copies of the Lange tabloid newspaper in a Sept. 2018 issue of the Winston-Salem Journal. The winning piece was also available on-site at the museum throughout the duration of the exhibition and featured interviews with Lange from 1966, Walker Evans’ photos of Winston-Salem from the 1930s and stories of hunger in the local community.

“Art has long been a medium through which people like Lange have not only documented history, but also helped shape it. We are honored by this innovative partnership with the Second Harvest Food Bank in a rare blending of missions, fusing art and empathy to elevate the chronic needs of this thriving community,” said Phil Archer, deputy director at Reynolda House. “The winning publication, designed by Reynolda’s visual storyteller Aaron Canipe, illustrated past and present hardships with beauty and compassion.”

Eric Aft, chief executive officer of Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina adds, “Poverty remains persistent and significant in our communities. Contemporary poverty looks different from the poverty of Lange’s time, making it sometimes unrecognizable and hard to see, but its impacts on children, on seniors, on families, and on community health remain the same. The human toll of tenacious poverty and low wage work, coupled with a rising cost of living, means many families struggle to afford enough food and meet other basic needs. The Dorothea Lange exhibition served to bring renewed and profound visibility to this struggle.”

Reynolda has been the winner of other recent design awards, including the gold medal for the Lange gallery guide and for the museum’s Hopper to Pollock title wall posters in the 2019 Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) Publications Competition, as well as the gold medal for Reynolda’s centennial marketing campaign in the 2018 SEMC competition.

AAM, the only organization representing the entire scope of the museum community,  received approximately 350 submissions in 12 print categories from institutions of all types and sizes in the US and around the world. For a complete list of AAM Museum Publications Design competition award winners, visit the AAM website.

About Reynolda
Reynolda, in Winston-Salem, N.C., is a rare gem among the nation’s cultural institutions and historic greenspaces. The 51-year-old museum at the center of Reynolda’s 180 acres, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, presents a renowned art collection in a historic and incomparable setting: the original 1917 interiors of the country manor of R. J. Reynolds. Spanning 250 years, the collection is an uncompromisingly selective one, a chronology of American art, with each artist represented by one work of major significance. The Reynolda experience includes a free app called Reynolda Revealed; touring exhibitions in the museum’s Mary and Charlie Babcock Wing; formal gardens, conservatory and walking trails of Reynolda Gardens; and more than 25 of the estate’s original buildings repurposed as shops and restaurants in Reynolda Village. Reynolda, located at 2250 Reynolda Road, is adjacent to and a part of Wake Forest University. For more information, please visit reynolda.org.

Connect at facebook.com/rhmaa or @CurateReynolda on Instagram.

###

Media Contact
Kaci Baez
336.758.5524 or kaci@reynolda.org