Colleen Kenyon (1951-2022)
The staff and Board of Trustees of the Center for Photography at Woodstock mourn the passing of Colleen Kenyon, a distinguished photographer and educator and our second Executive Director. Colleen died on November 29, 2022, at Ivy Lodge in Saugerties, NY. For over twenty years, from 1981 to 2003, Colleen guided CPW from a fledgling alternative space to an internationally recognized cultural center. She worked for many years alongside her twin sister Kathleen Kenyon at CPW to champion the concerns of women artists, establish a widely acclaimed artist residency program, secure a permanent building in Woodstock, and exhibit a broad range of new photographic talent.
The Kenyon twins were born in Dunkirk, NY, in 1951. Both attended Skidmore College, graduating in 1973, and both went on to study art and photography at Indiana University. Colleen received her M.F.A. from Indiana University in 1976 and taught at Slippery Rock State College in Pennsylvania. She first joined CPW–then called the Catskill Center for Photography–as a volunteer in 1978. She then became the organization’s first “artist in residence.” In the same year, her work was selected for inclusion in John Szarkowski’s landmark exhibition “Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960” at the Museum of Modern Art.
In 1981, Colleen Kenyon was named as CPW’s Executive Director; a year later her sister joined as Associate Director. During her 25-year tenure, Colleen refocused the Center’s mission on contemporary fine art photography, and she secured major grants to expand the exhibition and workshop programs. Under her direction, CPW inaugurated a regional fellowship award and hosted more than 500 photography workshops with prominent artists, including Sally Mann, William Wegman, Joyce Tenneson, and Mary Ellen Mark. She also served as editor and designer of the Center Quarterly, a crucial publication for critical writing about photography throughout the 1980s. In 1999, Kenyon inaugurated Woodstock AIR, an acclaimed residency program for artists of color, which has to date welcomed over 150 photographers and writers. As a curator, Kenyon organized several key exhibitions at CPW, including “Legacy: Dylan in Woodstock” in 2001 and “Once Upon A Time” in 2003.
In 2004, Colleen and Kathleen were the recipients of CPW’s inaugural Vision Award. In addition, Colleen Kenyon was the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Photography Fellowship, a grant from the Creative Artist Public Service Program, and a Polaroid 20×24 Studio Award. She was an artist in residence at the Nantucket School of Art & Design, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. Her photographs are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, and the Indiana University Art Museum in Bloomington, Indiana.
Top Image: Colleen Kenyon (American, 1951-2022), Untitled (from the “Sunporch” series), 1975. Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.