MUUS Collection is pleased to announce the exhibition Our Voices, Our Streets: Fred W. McDarrah’s New York opening at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Brooklyn Infusion Center, curated by Miranda Barnes. MUUS Collection’s core mission is to bring the work of our five estates to new audiences, and as new and significant research has underscored the importance of bringing art to hospital settings, MUUS is proud to contribute to Memorial Sloan Kettering’s initiatives to create artful and healing environments for their patients.
Fred W.McDarrah’s photographs of New York City in the 1960’s and 1970’s are now on view for patients at the Brooklyn Infusion Center, featuring ecstatic and celebratory images of Gay Pride and African-American Parades. The photographs McDarrah took as staff photographer for The Village Voice capture the resilience and strength of New Yorkers across decades, in protests and in parades.
"I studied humanities and justice and have always thought about ways to incorporate more of the public with fine art,” says curator Miranda Barnes. “It’s important to make people feel represented, and seeing resilient New Yorkers through Fred McDarrah’s lens is very powerful. I’m a native New Yorker, so it’s been really special to have an opportunity to explore more of McDarrah’s work, and I hope that this is an opportunity for people to engage with his photographs and learn more about him."
“This show is particularly special since for the past 15 years, MSK's Brooklyn Infusion Center has featured work of Brooklyn artists as a way to connect with the local community, and we have recently added an LGBTQ+ clinic to the location so we are excited to provide a show that we hope will speak on many different levels to the diverse patient population that we serve,” says Melissa Dallal, Project Manager at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
MUUS Collection’s founder, Michael W. Sonnenfeldt, says: “This is a deeply personal gift for my family. I have been a patient of Sloan Kettering’s since I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2007, and since then we have become significant financial contributors because of the excellent care I received and because of the immense respect I have for the world-class excellence exemplified by Sloan Kettering’s entire team of doctors and support staff. We jumped at the opportunity to add to our support by providing an exhibit from MUUS Collection. For patients and visitors to the facility where the exhibit will be housed, it is our hope that the pleasure and distraction provided by great and meaningful photography will provide a respite from thec oncerns they will have being at Sloan Kettering. I can’t think of a better way to marry the disparate elements of my life than to provide this exhibit for allwho cross through the doors of Sloan Kettering.”
