Pamela Pecchio
We are thrilled to kick off 2026 featuring the works of Pamela Pecchio. Pamela is a Boston area multidisciplinary artist working primarily in photography. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Aperture and Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York, the Jordan National Gallery of Art in Amman, and Köeln Art in Cologne. Works have been featured in The New Yorker, Village Voice, and Art Papers, and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Yale University Art Museum; and other major institutions. She holds a BFA from the University of Georgia and an MFA from Yale University. At Yale she received the Richard Dixon Welling Prize. Pamela is currently Professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
Founder
Founder (2011–2022) is a long-term project that reconsiders the legacy of the United States’ Founding Fathers through a remarkably personal perspective. Initiated while the artist was a new mother and professor at the University of Virginia, an institution founded by Thomas Jefferson. The work emerges from an environment where patriarchal history is materially and symbolically present. Drawing on local landscapes and historical traces, Pamela brings these elements into the studio to be scanned, printed, collaged, and re-photographed. The project expanded following a relocation to the Boston area in 2015, situating the work within another foundational geography of American history.
In the context of recurring historical cycles and the approaching 250th anniversary of the United States, Founder reflects on the instability of national myths and the unresolved tensions embedded within them.
Steven Duede
Visual Artist, Aspect Principle
I explore parallels between photography and history, and their relationships to truth. I use collage and the juxtaposition of imagery as a reminder that varied stories can be told from the same set of facts.
Founder
Founder (2011-2022) began as a look at the US Founding Fathers through my lens as a new mother and female professor at the University of Virginia. The university was founded by one of the country’s most prominent patriarchs, Thomas Jefferson, whose presence is palpable. Reflecting on the intersection of personal, political, gendered, and geographic histories, I brought the local landscape (and its traces of the Founding Fathers) into the studio to scan, print, collage, and re-photograph it. The project expanded when I relocated in 2015 to the Boston area, the birthplace of the American Revolution.
My studio contains books, scraps of paper, vegetation, wallpaper samples, postcards, and other artifacts that reference American history. I cut and place things together, and use a range of analog and digital tools to create both collages and assemblages. I explore parallels between photography and history, and their relationships to truth. I use collage and the juxtaposition of imagery as a reminder that varied stories can be told from the same set of facts.
Founder challenges notions of recorded history–questioning the authors and considering their identities. As a verb, to founder is to “come to grief, to fail, to sink, to become submerged, to send to the bottom, to collapse.” American history, as most histories, is in a repetitive loop. As we near the 250th anniversary of the United States, I find myself reflecting on this work, current events, and thoughts about the future.
-Pamela Pecchio
Pamela Pecchio
Pamela Pecchio
Pamela Pecchio is a Boston-area multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in photography. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Aperture, Daniel Cooney Fine Art, Whetlab Projects and Wallspace Galleries in New York, as well as internationally at The Jordan National Gallery of Art in Amman, International Art Camp in Beijing, China, the Amsterdam DreamBike Festival, and Köeln Art in Cologne, Germany. Recent group museum exhibitions include the Lowe Art Museum, Figge Art Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, and Georgia Museum of Art. Her work has been reviewed in The New Yorker, the Village Voice, and Art Papers. Permanent collections include the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Yale University Art Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. She received her BFA from the University of Georgia, and her MFA from Yale University where she was awarded the Richard Dixon Welling Prize. Pecchio is currently Professor of the Practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
Visit: Pamela Pecchio