The Railway & Locomotive Historical Society has announced the winners of its 2019 research fellowship grant awards: the Center for Railroad Photography & Art of Madison, Wis., and author Tony Reevy of Durham, N.C.
The awards panel chose CRP&A’s application to bring a broader audience to the research from its “After Promontory: 150 Years of Transcontinental Railroading” project through the CRP&A exhibitions program. A $2,500 grant was awarded through the William D. Middleton Research Fellowship.
Earlier, R&LHS provided essential 2018 funding for the research and curation efforts on the project, and the 2019 award builds on that support. It will expand the traveling exhibition and related programming.
The 2019 Golden Spike sesquicentennial focused interest and energy around the topic. Each additional exhibition venue presents an opportunity to share the broader story of the transcontinentals with a new community, furthering the educational tenet of CRP&A’s mission to preserve and present significant images of railroading.
Programming typically includes receptions, gallery talks, or lectures at host venues. The Architectural Heritage Center in Portland, Oregon, where After Promontory is currently staged, convened a five-lecture series around the exhibition, featuring talks by Justin Franz and Alexander Benjamin Craghead, among others.
The winner of the John H. White, Jr. Research Fellowship for $2,250 was Reevy, who is researching material for a book on the railroad photography of Philip R. Hastings.
The field research, to be conducted at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento in July 2020, will include a full review of the Hastings photography and manuscript collections held there. The book, already under contract with Indiana University Press, will hold significance not only for railroad historians, but also for scholars of art and photography in general. Despite Hastings’ wide popularity, especially among railroad enthusiasts, a book-length survey of the best of his photography has never been published.
The purpose of The Railroad Photography of Phil Hastings is to draw the best of his photos into one volume. In so doing, the volume will also refocus attention on this master of railroad-subject photography. The book will also fill a major gap in the literature of American railroading. Hastings remains the most notable American railroad-subject photographer of the mid-20th century who has not yet been profiled in a full book. The university plans to release the book in fall 2022.
Reevy’s railroad books include O. Winston Link: Life Along the Line – A Photographic Portrait of America’s Last Great Steam Railroad (Abrams, 2012) and The Railroad Photography of Jack Delano (Indiana University Press, 2015). He has authored two other books and more than 40 articles. He was also a winner of the R&LHS’s 2006 David P. Morgan article award. He is director of development for North Carolina State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues.
Truly outstanding awards.
AMAZONSMILE has potential.