WINSTON-SALEM, NC.- An exhibition of work by the best-known photographer in American history will open at Reynolda House Museum of American Art March 11. “Ansel Adams: Eloquent Light” will be on view at Reynolda House—its only venue—through July 17, 2016.

“This exhibition is being organized especially for our museum,” said Allison Perkins, executive director of Reynolda House. “Not only was Ansel Adams a widely popular photographer, he was a respected artist and activist. We wanted to bring together his work here in North Carolina, in an exhibition that will showcase his incredible artistic skill along with his environmental advocacy.”

Ansel Adams subscribed to the romantic tradition of American landscape, an artistic lineage that included major American painters—including Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt —whose work anchors the collection of Reynolda House Museum of American Art.

“Ansel Adams: Eloquent Light” will include 37 photographs from the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and two private collections in Texas.

Adams developed a system for creating luminous, vivid landscape photographs in sharp contrasts of black and white. He then printed his film negatives with meticulous attention to craft. Adams’s manner of framing and capturing both magnificent, large-scale landscape formations, and small, exquisite natural objects created icons of the American wilderness.

An early and passionate environmentalist as well as an artist, Adams advocated powerfully for wilderness preservation, national park creation, and the Sierra Club, with which he was affiliated from the age of 17. The exhibition’s debut at Reynolda House coincides with the centennial of the National Park Service, which marks its 100th anniversary in August 2016. Both the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association have joined a long list of outreach partners and sponsors for the exhibition.