Timothy Duffy: Blue Muse

The Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History (DMFAH) presents Timothy Duffy: Blue Muse, on view June 1, 2021 through August 28, 2021. There will be an OPENING RECEPTION on Sunday June 6^th from 2-5pm.

Location: The Gallery Space, 536 Craghead Street, Danville River District
Gallery Hours: Thursday | Friday | Saturday • Noon – 8pm, Sunday • Noon-5pm or by appointment

Using a photography process invented in the United States in the nineteenth-century, Timothy Duffy creates masterful one-of-a-kind tintype portraits of American musicians, preserving the faces of American roots music for future generations. 

“Tim Duffy’s choice of the tintype aligns with a distinctly American history of photography, while his subjects represent one of the most important legacies in the United States,” said Susan Taylor, NOMA’s Montine McDaniel Freeman Director. “His work to preserve this part of southern culture is monumentally important.” We look forward to sharing it with the city of Danville.

Featuring artists from the American South, including local New Orleans legends such as Alabama Slim, Little Freddie King, and Pat “Mother Blues” Cohen, DMFAH’s premier of Blue Muse will feature 30 of Duffy’s original unique tintypes.

Duffy’s tintypes are an artful extension of his other occupation, as founder and Executive Director of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, which provides support and promotion for Southern American musicians. “In making these photographs, in compelling us to pay attention, look closer, know their faces, and learn their names, Duffy has enlisted one American tradition, the tintype, in the service of securing another,” Said Russell Lord, NOMA’s Freeman Family Curator of Photographs. 

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated book, “Blue Muse,” published by UNC Press and the New Orleans Museum of Art.