NEW YORK.- The Museum of Modern Art will present “Among Friends", the inaugural event in a series of conversations with artists, presented by The Friends of Education. This event will feature artist Carrie Mae Weems, author Deborah Willis, and Peter Galassi, Chief Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA.

Carrie Mae Weems is an internationally acclaimed artist and a self-described "image maker" whose principal medium is photography. Over her twenty-year career, Weems has produced an array of narrative tableaux, documentary series, and installation works. Her photographs combine universal themes with the specificity of family relationships, race, class and gender identity, and explore our collective histories and the role these histories have played in society. Major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art have exhibited and are collectors of Weems' photographs. She has received numerous awards, such as the Pollock Krasner Foundation grant in Photography in 2002. She defines her work as "describing simply and directly those aspects of American culture in need of deeper illumination."

Deborah Willis, Ph.D. is Professor of Photography and Imaging in the Tisch School of the Arts and of Africana Studies at New York University. Willis has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship 'Genius Award', 2000, the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award, 1996, and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Writing on Photography, 1995. As a former curator of exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and as the curator of photography and prints at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture, Willis has authored numerous books, organized exhibitions, and lectured extensively on African American photography.

Peter Galassi first worked in the Department of Photography as Curatorial Intern in 1974-75. He returned as Associate Curator in 1981 and was named Chief Curator in 1991. Collaborating closely with other members of the department’s curatorial staff, he organized the recent reinstallation of MoMA’s photography galleries, and has presented more than 30 exhibitions at MoMA, including Andreas Gursky (2001), Walker Evans & Company (2000), Aleksandr Rodchenko (1998, with Magdalena Dabrowski and Leah Dickerman), Cindy Sherman: The Complete Untitled Film Stills (1997), American Photography 1890-1965 from The Museum of Modern Art (1995), Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort (1991), and Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Early Work (1987). Galassi has authored and coauthored numerous publications and lectured extensively at universities and museums in Europe and the United States.

About The Friends of Education - The Friends of Education is a 50-member Museum affiliate group founded in 1993 by Akosua Barthwell Evans, Agnes Gund, and David Rockefeller, Jr., as a subcommittee of MoMA’s Trustee Committee on Education. In 1995, the Friends established a fund to raise money to finance the Museum’s acquisition of art created by African American artists and programs to attract African American audiences. In 2002, the Friends became a full affiliate committee of the Museum. Stuart W. Lewis, M.D. currently serves as the Chairman of the Friends of Education.