April 3, 2026

Press Release

bruce katsiff:

Pieces of a life

Michener Art Museum’s founding director Bruce Katsiff returns to the Museum with the new exhibition Pieces of a Life, tracing his 60-year photography career The retrospective celebrates the artist’s deep connection to Bucks County’s storied artistic community and follows the evolution of photography, with innovative use of the medium across the analog-digital divide

DOYLESTOWN, PA (March 24, 2026)—The 60-year photography career of legendary Bucks County arts administrator Bruce Katsiff is on view at Michener Art Museum with the new exhibition, Pieces of a Life, from April 11–August 12, 2026.

Known as the founding director who established the Michener as a regional destination for American art, Katsiff returns to its galleries as an accomplished Bucks County artist. A graduate from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Katsiff saw early success as a photographer with an appearance at Museum of Modern Art in New York for a 1968 exhibition. Bruce Katsiff: Pieces of a Life features 60 photographs in a retrospective on the artist, guest curated by art historian Dorothy Fisher.

“Bruce Katsiff had a monumental impact on Michener Art Museum as an institution, and we are delighted to welcome him back as a contemporary artist,” said Executive Director and CEO Anne Corso. “I hope this exhibition gives our visitors a fuller picture of the remarkable man who built such a legacy for the artistic community of Bucks County and beyond.”

© Bruce Katsiff (b. 1945), *Pieces of a Life*, 2013. Platinum palladium print, 12 x 20 inches. Courtesy of Katsiff Art Trust.

Exhibition Dates:

April 11– August 2, 2026

Location:

Michener Art Museum

138 S. Pine Street, Doylestown PA 18901

Gallery Hours:

Wednesdays–Saturdays, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Sundays 12–5 p.m.

Open Tuesdays from 12–5 p.m. through May 19, 2026.

SPECIAL EVENTS:

Bruce Katsiff: Pieces of a Life Exhibition Opening Day

Saturday, April 11 • 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Free for Members • General admission applies

History of Photography Before the Digital Revolution with Bruce Katsiff

Wednesday, May 13 • 1–2 p.m. $10 Member • $22 Non-Member

Gallery Talk with Bruce Katsiff and Guest Curator Dorothy Fisher

Wednesday, June 17 • 2:30–3:30 p.m. $10 Member • $22 Non-Member

© Bruce Katsiff (b. 1945), Robert Dodge (b. 1939), and Gwendolyn Kerber (b. 1953), *Katsiff/Dodge/Kerber, Pieces of a Life*, 2013. Mixed media, 22 ½ x 30 inches. Courtesy of Katsiff Art Trust.

Pieces of a Life includes selections from five distinct bodies of work, with large format portraits of the artist’s friends and neighbors from 1970’s Lumberville, Pa.; selections from his famed Nature Morte series; collaborative platinum prints; and composite digital portraits called Face Maps.

River Town Portraits, a project Katsiff started to get to know new acquaintances after relocating from Philadelphia in 1968, came to involve trusted friends as the decade progressed. This precedent of artmaking through close connections to artists and friends continued in the landmark series Nature Morte, a consideration of form and mortality through photographs of posed animal remains.

Inspired by a chance encounter with a fatally wounded racoon, Katsiff pursued the limits of the platinum process to create oversized photographs that he said was an “effort to find beauty in images we have been taught to fear and avoid.” The Nature Morte series was only possible thanks to remains gifted by friends and students, including a disinterred dog skeleton pictured in the photograph Pieces of a Life, as Katsiff developed a reputation as the neighborhood “bone guy.”

This photographic pursuit led to deeper artistic collaboration. “The Michener exhibition is the first time the public will get to see the collaborative prints made by Bruce and a number of artist friends, who edited and embellished platinum prints from the Nature Morte series,” said guest curator Dorothy Fisher. “I love these because they bring the best of Bruce’s photography into direct contact with his other legacy—a rich network of artists in and around Bucks County.”

The faces of several of those artists are on display with Katsiff’s most recent series, Face Maps, including painter Peter Paone, woodworker Mira Nakashima, and sculptor George R. Anthonisen. The photographer’s digital-based project reconfigures facial features into bold geometry by compiling many individual images into a single large composite.

Beyond capturing Katsiff’s personal connections to Bucks County’s artistic communities, the Michener retrospective demonstrates his mastery of the evolving medium of photography. “Bruce’s dedication to the history of photography and the specific timeline of his career through the end of the twentieth century means we can also use his work to think more deeply about photography itself,” Fisher said.

Over the span of six decades, Katsiff’s work remained at the technical forefront in the field of photography, while reflecting his position at the center of Bucks County arts during a transitional historical moment. “My pictures are always personal,” Katsiff said. “Photography has served as my personal psychiatrist: a private tool helping me observe, record, understand, and interact with the world.”

© Bruce Katsiff (b. 1945), *Carla Van Dyk and Pussy*, 1973. Archival pigment print, 22 x 28 inches. Courtesy of Katsiff Art Trust.

A full-color catalogue on the exhibition is available at the Museum Shop with essays by the artist, guest curator Dorothy Fisher, and Jennifer-Navva Milliken, Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. An audio guide for Pieces of a Life, narrated by Bruce Katsiff and Dorothy Fisher, will be available for museum visitors and online through the free Bloomberg Connects app.

Major support for Bruce Katsiff: Pieces of a Life is provided by Julie Jensen Bryan, with additional support from The Bullough Family Legacy Trust, David and Gwen Campbell, Kathy and Ted Fernberger, and many friends of the artist.

Bruce Katsiff and his large format camera

About the artist, Bruce katsiff

Photographer and educator Bruce Katsiff has experimented with a variety of styles, subjects, and media across his six-decade career. Katsiff served as chair of the Art and Music Department at Bucks County Community College for over a decade and was the founding director of Michener Art Museum from 1989 to 2012. He mastered the art of platinum and silver gelatin prints using large format cameras and he also embraces digital photography in his more recent series. Katsiff earned his BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and his MFA from Pratt Institute. He attended postgraduate studies at Oxford University. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and is held in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Michener Art Museum. Bruce divides his time between Bucks County and Philadelphia with his wife Jo.

About the Curator, dorothy lewis fisher

Dorothy Lewis Fisher is a PhD. Candidate at the University of Delaware and has been the Lynn Herrick Sharp Curatorial Fellow at the Delaware Art Museum since September 2023. She holds a BA in art history from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and an MA in Art History from both the University of Delaware and the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she graduated with distinction. Her research involves the history of arts programs operated in unusual places—like the Space Race-era Artist Cooperation Program operated by NASA, the subject of her dissertation.

About the michener art museum

Michener Art Museum is dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting the art and cultural heritage of the Delaware Valley region. The Museum is named for Doylestown’s most famous son James A. Michener, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and supporter of the arts. Home to a world-class collection of Pennsylvania Impressionist paintings and a permanent collection that explores a variety of artistic expressions, the Michener has a reputation for its craft holdings, which includes the Nakashima Reading Room. The Museum is housed on the site of the 1884 Bucks County Jail and is surrounded by the original prison walls, now part of the Patricia D. Pfundt Sculpture Garden. Michener Art Museum offers wide ranging programming that nurtures a lifelong involvement in the arts, with rotating special exhibitions, artist conversations and studio tours, gallery talks, the Putman Arts Leader Lecture series, as well as dance and music performances.

For more information: https://michenerartmuseum.org/exhibition/bruce-katsiff-pieces-of-a-life/

Contacts:

Brad Sanders, bsanders@michenerartmuseum.org 215.340.9800 x133

Rachel Olenick, rolenick@michenerartmuseum.org 215.340.9800 x105

Image credit for banner image: © Bruce Katsiff (b. 1945), White Barn, 2024. Archival pigment print, 14 x 17 inches. Courtesy of Katsiff Art Trust.