Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe manuscript and research collection

1790-1986 [bulk 1984-1986]

A photographer, Jeanne Moutoussamy's work has appeared in Life, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Ebony, Essence, People, and The New York Times. She has shown in solo and group exhibitions around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY; The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Galerie Herve Odermat in Paris, France; and The Excelsior in Florence, Italy. She is the author of five books, including Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers (1986); the 25th Anniversary Edition of Daufuskie Island: Photographs by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, which won the 2008 Essence Literary Award in Photography; and most recently, Among Others: Blackness at MoMA (2019). Having devoted many years to civic causes in health, arts, and civil rights issues, Moutoussamy-Ashe's photography is interwoven with her activism. She has lectured at various educational and cultural institutions around the country and taught photography to high school and college students. In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed her as an alternate representative of the United States to the United Nations General Assembly. In 2011, she traveled to Nepal on behalf of healthcare organizations to document healthcare workers' efforts to address medical issues in the country. In 2013, Moutoussamy-Ashe received a Ford Foundation grant to research photographs from the 1963 March on Washington and curate an exhibition to commemorate the its 50th anniversary; the exhibition was held at Leica Gallery. In 2014, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture obtained a series of her Daufuskie Island images as part of their permanent collection, which was originally conceived of and shot over five years in the late 1970s. Currently, she is a director of the Arthur Ashe Endowment for the Defeat of AIDS and served on the President's Council of The Cooper Union, of which she is also a former Alumni Trustee.