Artist Talk with Vail Visiting Artist Dona McAdams

Dona Ann McAdams studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and has an Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from Rutgers University and a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from Empire State College. 

McAdams has exhibited at many places nationally and internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; the International Center for Photography; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Library for Performing Arts at Lincoln Center; Robert Miller Gallery; and La Primavera Fotographica in Barcelona, Spain. 

Her photographs are in the collections of, among other places, the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Print Club; the Pompidou Center; and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. 

Since 1983, she has been committed to bringing cameras and photography into marginalized and underserved communities. She has built community darkrooms and taught photography in places as diverse as New York City homeless shelters, Appalachian farming communities, thoroughbred racetracks, and day programs for people living with severe mental illness.