C.W. Post Professor to Lecture on History of Glen Cove
Book and pictorial documentation to become part of the city’s permanent archives

Brookville, N.Y. -- How would you describe the place where you live? Is it a bustling city? A sleepy seaside town? For Joan Harrison, Glen Cove isn’t just the place where she has lived for 25 years, it’s a changing city with an complicated story, one she shares through her latest project, “What We See Where We Live,” a pictorial documentation of contemporary Glen Cove that will become part of the archives of the Robert Coles History Room at the Glen Cove Public Library.

On June 25, in honor of the 75th anniversary of Glen Cove’s Morgan Park, Harrison will give a talk called “A History of Glen Cove,” with a special emphasis on the Landing, the oldest area of the city. Morgan Park, where the original steamboat landing was located, is open to the residents of Glen Cove and Locust Valley and will be undergoing a restoration next year. It was leased to the city of Glen Cove by J.P. Morgan Jr. in 1932 for 999 years for $1 a year. The talk will take place at 7:30 p.m. at Russian Church Hall on Alvin Street. The suggested donation is $5 and will support the Landing Pride Civic Association.

“Glen Cove has a long, rich and varied history with much to look and think about, and it’s at a point of tremendous change,” Harrison said. A photographer and professor of art at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, Harrison is writing a book, “Glen Cove,” a photographic history to be published by Arcadia Publishing in 2008.

Harrison is actively photographing the city and said she is amazed by what she is learning. “It’s interesting what is remembered and what is forgotten,” she said. “Glen Cove once had a major opera house, yet hardly anyone knows that. Eventually the opera house became Tiffereth Israel, the oldest intact Jewish congregation’s synagogue which moved and the building became the Baptist Church which houses the soup kitchen. The history of the city is complex and fascinating.”

As a professor of art at C.W. Post, Harrison teaches digital imaging to undergraduate students and serves as a mentor to Master of Fine Arts candidates. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and her work has been widely exhibited and published. She was the curator for “Island to Island: Intimate Portraits,” an exhibition that was on display at the Julia Margaret Cameron Museum on the Isle of Wight in England and which will be shown at the Hillwood Art Museum on the C.W. Post Campus in September, with an opening reception on September 20 from 5 to 8 p.m.

Harrison’s photographs are included in: “Family a Celebration of Humanity” (William Morrow/Harper Collins, 2001); “Black and White Photography, Manifest Visions an International Collection” by James Luciana (Rockport Publishers, 2000) and “Pregnant Pictures) (Routledge Press, 2000).

Posted: May 31, 2007