Since we will be well over half a century late to the tea mentioned in the at-left invitation for University art professor Allen Downs, you are instead invited to review the archival resources that illuminate his exhibition of photography at the University Gallery, April 24-May 22, 1953…

From the MN Daily’s PDF Archives, The Ivory Tower April 27, 1953, “Downs Calls Photos ‘New Object’ in Art”

“Subject matter of the pictures varies from slum districts to Niagara Falls and nudes.

Downs, who came to the University in 1948, called his work ‘the fusion’ of documentation and abstraction. ‘A photograph is a new object, in spite of its authentic appearance as a document of past experience,’ he said.”

 

From the WAM Collection at the University Archives, Box 4: (the invitation) and photographs of the exhibit:

Rebecca Wilson is a graduate student in the Master of Liberal Studies program at the University of Minnesota, completing a minor in Museum Studies. She also serves as a Visitor Services Assistant at the Weisman Art Museum.