If a picture is worth a thousand words, The Westport Library’s upcoming art exhibits tell a volume of stories — just in time for StoryFest 2025.
In conjunction with the Library’s annual literary festival, the art featured this fall will be on display from October 8 through December 16 in the Library’s Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries. Each exhibit provides captivating visual narratives that align with StoryFest as a celebration of the story in all forms, featuring storytellers across all forms of media.
Every Picture Tells a Story: Photographs from the Westport Public Art Collections will be on display in the Sheffer Gallery. An opening reception for the exhibit will take place on Wednesday, October 15, at 6 pm, with a presentation by guest curator and photographer Arthur Nager following at 7 pm.
Every Picture Tells a Story includes photographs from the Westport Public Art Collections (WestPAC) that highlight the work of the many visionary photographers represented in the collection. Nager worked with the Library’s exhibit curator Carole Erger-Fass and members of WestPAC to identify photographs that demonstrated diverse creative and technological approaches to the medium. The work on display includes portraits and landscape studies, as well as historical, documentary, and abstract imagery in black and white and color.
The exhibit features internationally renowned photographers Philippe Halsman, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Eliot Porter, and Lucia Nebel White; along with Westport photographers including Larry Silver and David Kalman, whose featured works focused on the town and region; and photojournalists Spencer Platt and 2015 BOOKED for the evening honoree Lynsey Addario, among others.
Nager will also be leading a three-part Verso University workshop, Visual Storytelling: Develop Your Photographic Vision, in conjunction with his exhibit and with StoryFest 2025.
Larry Morse’s Black Men Reading will be on display in the South Gallery, with an opening reception on Wednesday, October 29, at 6 pm and an artist conversation between Morse and Westport artist Miggs Burroughs at 7 pm.
The idea for this ongoing series began in early 2020, inspired by daily subway commutes where Morse observed fellow passengers, including the occasional sight of Black men with books in hand. A lifelong avid reader, Morse was captivated by such rare moments, which resonated with him on a profound level — one that transcended timely happenings and spoke to deep-rooted aspects of identity, dignity, and representation.
The series’ title, Black Men Reading, reflects both the subject and the artist’s personal connection to it. The work calls to mind a historical truth: before the Civil War, teaching a Black person to read — or being caught reading — was punishable by violence, separation from family, or death. The series honors the enduring strength and resilience of literacy as an act of liberation, urging new generations to reclaim the joy and power of reading as a lifelong pursuit and a cultural inheritance.
Historical and social inequities have long affected the freedom to read within Black communities. Early exposure to books typically begins in the home environment. Systemic barriers have often shifted that responsibility to schools and educators, leaving a gap that this exhibit seeks to help bridge.
“Recognizing that knowledge is power, and that the kind of knowledge that comes from reading books is the most powerful kind of knowledge of all,” Morse said, “we realize why now, more than ever, it is so vitally important for Black men and women to establish the habit of reading, and to provide an example for others to follow.”
The Jesup Gallery will highlight an often-overlooked art form with the continuation of an album art series from the collection of American blues keyboardist and record producer Mark Naftalin and his wife, Ellen Naftalin.
Art of the Album: Modern Blues showcases a curated selection of LPs featuring Naftalin’s performances on keyboard, including those with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. From Mother Earth’s Living With the Animals, to Brewer and Shipley’s Tarkio, these albums capture the cultural pulse of a time when vinyl packaging became both a canvas and a collector’s keepsake.
In the 1960s and 70s, as American blues found new audiences across the globe, the album cover became its own form of visual art. Here in Westport, local music enthusiast Sally White shared her love of jazz and blues through her record nook at Klein’s Bookstore, providing a soundtrack of both legendary southern artists from the 30s and 40s and the emerging musicians they inspired.
Ellen Naftalin was 16 when she first heard the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in Sally’s. “Little did I know that I would one day marry the keyboard player,” she said.
With the rise of digital media, album art has become a nostalgic artifact, yet its legacy continues to shape how we experience and remember music. The Westport Library extends its utmost thanks to Ellen and Mark Naftalin for sharing this vibrant piece of American music history, spotlighting the artistry of those designers and musicians who helped define an era.
