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The following was submitted by the Griffin Museum of Photography:
The Griffin Museum is pleased to present the exhibition Manifest Destiny on view from Jan. 9 to March 15, 2026.
There will be an in-person artist panel on Jan. 24, from 3-4:30 p.m., followed by a reception from 5-7 p.m.
Manifest Destiny refers to the 19th-century belief that the United States was destined to expand westward across North America. Artists of that era often responded by romanticizing expansion and conquest, depicting the West as a vast and “empty” landscape filled with promise. Such images concealed the realities of dispossession and erased the enduring presence of the peoples and cultures who had long inhabited these lands
The Griffin Museum’s exhibition Manifest Destiny revisits this legacy through a contemporary lens, bringing together photographers who investigate the layered histories held within the American landscape. The artists in this exhibition create images that bear witness to transformation, revealing human stories embedded in the land’s somber monumentality. Here, the emptiness of the landscape becomes a site of tension — between absence and presence, memory and erasure.
Featuring the work of American and international artists Scott Conarroe, Craig Easton, Lisa Elmaleh, Rich Frishman, Drew Leventhal, and Vicky Sambunaris, Manifest Destiny invites viewers to reconsider the narratives that have shaped our national identity.
Austin Bryant: ‘Where They Remain’
The Griffin Museum is honored to present the work of Austin Bryant in the Atelier Gallery as part of the Manifest Destiny exhibition.
“Where They Still Remain” is a photographic project that serves as a memorial to the African American and Wampanoag indigenous communities on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. These two groups have had their histories intertwined on the island as they have faced centuries of displacement and oppression — often finding stability only in each other and the land on which they persist.
“Through my own photography alongside archival photographs and texts, I aim to evoke the countless lives and stories lost to time and systematic erasure.” — Austin Bryant
Click here for more information on the Bryant exhibit.
John Willis: ‘A View from the Rez’ and ‘Mni Wiconi’
The Griffin Museum is excited to showcase the work of John Willis in the Griffin Gallery as part of the Manifest Destiny exhibition.
John Willis’s projects showcase his long-term engagement with the land of Pine Ridge and Standing Rock by revealing how the landscape itself becomes both witness and participant in the struggles and continuities of Native life. His body of work also includes ledger art by the artists Dwayne Wilcox and Joe Pulliam.
In “A View from the Rez,” Willis photographs everyday environments — open plains, weathered structures, improvised memorials — that underscore how land records each interaction, each burden, each assertion of presence. The terrain is a living archive of survival and sovereignty, shaped by generations who have remained rooted despite imposed borders and historic dispossession.
In “Mni Wiconi,” created during the resistance at Standing Rock, Willis turned his lens toward the ways land and water became the focus in the defense of Indigenous rights. Here, space is not neutral: it is sacred, threatened, and fiercely protected. The encampments, the prayer circles, the river itself — all become sites where human action and the natural world converge in a collective declaration that “water is life.”
Across both projects, Willis shows that land is not simply a place to stand but a relationship — one defined by stewardship, struggle, and the unbroken connection between people and the places that sustain them.
Click here for more information on the Willis exhibit.
Visit the Griffin
The Griffin Museum of Photography is open Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. The museum is closed on Monday.
General admission is $9 for adults; $5 for seniors. Members, Winchester residents, and children under 12 are admitted free. Admission is free to all every Thursday, 2 to 4 p.m.
For more information, call 781-729-1158, or visit www.griffinmuseum.org.
