> The Cincinnati Art Museum and Cincinnati Museum Center announce a joint research project on the African American photographer J.P. Ball (1825-1904) underwritten with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  One of the most notable daguerreotypists and photographers of the nineteenth century, Ball also made his mark as an abolitionist and entrepreneur.
> 
> Born in Virginia, Ball spent his early years in Ohio and later learned the art of daguerreotype from black Boston photographer John B. Bailey.  After a failed attempt to establish a studio of his own in Cincinnati in 1845 and a stint as an itinerant photographer in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio, Ball returned to Cincinnati in 1849 and soon opened a successful studio.  Ball's "Great Daguerrean Gallery of the West" soon penetrated mainstream white society and became one of the best-known studios of its type in the Midwest.
> 
> Ball also set out to improve American's knowledge of the history of people of African ancestry in this nation.  He began documenting that history and eventually produced a massive panorama entitled "mammoth Pictorial Tour of the United States Comprising Views of the African Slave Trade..." Ball also published a companion pamphlet detailing the horrors of slavery.  Ball's reputation drew many famous names to his studios, including Frederick Douglass, Jenny Lind, and author Charles Dickens.  Ball eventually moved west, establishing studios in Minnesota, Montana, Washington, and Hawaii.
> 
> The Cincinnat Art Museum and Cincinnati Museum Center are seeking to locate images and documents that relate to Ball and his business partners, Robert G. Ball, Thomas C. Ball, J.P. Ball, Jr., Robert Harlan, Alexander S. Thomas, and the painter, Robert Duncanson for a future publication and exhibitions. The photographers worked in a variety of media and formats:  daguerreotype, ambrotype, tintype, and albumen print on carte de visite and cabinet card.  In addition we are seeking the location of images by contemporary nineteenth-century Cincinnati photographers, among them Ezekiel Hawkins, Thomas Faris, William Southgate Porter.
> 
> CoCurators:
> Scott Gampfer, Cincinnati Museum Center
> Teresa Leininger-Miller, University of Cincinnati
> Kristin L. Spangenberg, Cincinnati Art Museum
> 
> Write to J. P. Ball Project
> % Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Dr., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
> %Cincinnati Museum Center, 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio, 45203
> 
> Kristin L. Spangenberg
> Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs
> Cincinnati Art Museum
> 953 Eden Park Drive
> Cincinnati, OH 45202
> tel: 513.639.2948/fax: 513.639.2996
> [log in to unmask]
> 

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