History echoes in UVa art professor Pam Pecchio’s Sweet Briar show

“Mammary Memory” is one of several images drawn from Pam Pecchio’s “Inheritance” project, which includes still-life constructions created in her studio or home.


“TBD,” an exhibition by photographer Pamela Pecchio, opens in Sweet Briar’s Babcock Gallery with an artist reception at 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9. The event is free and open the public. The show will be on view through April 23.

Pecchio is an associate professor in the University of Virginia’s McIntire Department of Art, where she has taught photography since 2008. She grew up in Atlanta and received her Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Georgia and her M.F.A. from Yale in 2001. She is one of a number of active artists whose work is recognized by collectors of Southern photography, such as The Do Good Fund.

The images in the Sweet Briar show are drawn from Pecchio’s “Inheritance” project, which includes still-life constructions created in the studio or home. Some are collaged works that have been re-photographed. She uses a 4x5 view camera and film.


Pecchio’s work “Father” is a reference to the founding fathers’ presence in and around Charlottesville.


“The work addresses the intersection of personal history with national history as I have begun to experience it in Charlottesville, Virginia,” Pecchio says in her artist’s statement.

“As a female professor at Thomas Jefferson’s university, I am responding to the traces of our ‘founding fathers’ that mark the local landscape, a distinctly masculine geography of national formation.”

At Yale, Pecchio was awarded the Richard Dixon Welling Prize. According to her UVa biography, she has exhibited across the United States, and in China and Europe. Her New York exhibitions have been reviewed in the New Yorker and the Village Voice.

She is the author of two books, “eight,” an artist’s book published by Nexus Press, and “509,” a limited edition monograph published by Daniel 13 Press.

Sweet Briar’s Babcock Gallery houses exhibitions by mid-career professional artists in the region whose work supports the College’s studio art and art history curricula. Exhibitors are often, but not always, women. A primary goal is to expose students and others in the campus community to – and to highlight – the quality work of these professionals in our region and state.

To see Pecchio’s work and learn more about her, visit pamelapecchio.com.

Babcock Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The gallery closes when the College is not in session; it is recommended that visitors call ahead to confirm hours. For more information, contact Karol Lawson at (434) 381-6248 or klawson@sbc.edu.