Today marks the 102nd anniversary of Hugh Morton’s birth, and what better way to honor the day than to share the news that Photographs by Hugh Morton: An Uncommon Retrospective is on display in Grandfather Mountain’s new Wilson Center for Nature Discovery through Memorial Day. Hours vary: it can be viewed daily through March 16, then weekends through May 14, then daily once more through Memorial Day. This will be the exhibition’s eleventh venue in ten years (including a two-year hiatus during the pandemic) since its debut at Appalachian State University’s Turchin Center for the Arts in September 2013. I’ll be participating in a program at Grandfather Mountain to be held during the last days of the exhibition. I’ll update this blog post when the details become established.
To mark both of these occasions, I found the above negative depicting Morton’s first retrospective. It opened on November 6, 1980 at Morehead Planetarium at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and featured 100 of his favorite images. In addition to Morton’s photographs, the planetarium displayed thirty portraits painted by sports artist Lamar Sparkman, and billed the show as a two-man exhibition.