About the Artist

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948 and immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962. Morell received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and his MFA from the Yale University School of Art. He received honorary degrees from Bowdoin College in 1997 and from Lesley University in 2014. He was professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston from 1983 to 2010.

His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1998, Dutton Children's Books), A Camera in a Room (1995, Smithsonian Press), A Book of Books (2002, Bulfinch Press), Camera Obscura (2004, Bulfinch Press), Abelardo Morell (2005, Phaidon Press), The Universe Next Door (2013, The Art Institute of Chicago), Tent/Camera (2018, Nazraeli Press), and Flowers for Lisa (2018, Abrams Books).

He has received numerous awards and grants, which include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994 and an International Center of Photography Infinity Award in Art in 2011. In 2017, he received a Lucie Award for achievement in fine art. His work has been collected and shown in many galleries, institutions, and museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and several other museums in the United States and abroad. A retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the High Museum of Art closed in May 2014 after a year of travel. Most recently, his work was included in the exhibition Ansel Adams in Our Time at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.