Marilyn Nance

Photographer Marilyn Nance was born in New York, New York, on November 12, 1953 to Savannah Franklin Nance and Charles Leroy Nance. She received her B.F.A. degree in communications graphic design from the Pratt Institute in New York City in 1976, her M.F.A. degree in photography from the Maryland Institute College of Arts in Baltimore in 1996, and her M.P.S. degree in interactive art and technology from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1999.

After graduating from the Pratt Institute, Nance served as a photographer for the North American contingent at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1977. Following FESTAC, Nance continued to work as a photographer in various locations including New Orleans, Louisiana, the Oyotunji African Village in Sheldon, South Carolina, and carnivals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She worked as a curator for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library in 1997, where she curated and digitized images of African American people of the 19th century. In 1998, Nance began her project “Spirit, Faith, Grace, Rage: African Spiritual Culture in the United States.”

Throughout her career, Nance received numerous fellowships and grants including the New York State Arts Council Individual Artists Grant in 1987, the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellowship in photography in 1989 and 2000, and the NYFA fellowship in nonfiction literature in 1993. Nance published her book about FESTAC, Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos, with Fourthwall Books Publishing in 2022. Nance’s work has appeared in numerous museums and collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Modern Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Nance’s work was also featured in numerous magazines such as Essence, Life, The New York Times, NY Newsday, and The Village Voice as well as in Naomi Rosenblum’s A World History of Photography in 1984 and A History of Women Photographers in 1994.

Nance was a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography in 1991 and 1993. She also received a recognition as a community folklore scholar from the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklore Programs and Cultural Studies and an honorary fellowship in recognition of a significant personal achievement in photography from the Royal Photographic Society in 2024. In addition, Nance served as a member of The Santana Group, an interdisciplinary artist collective.

Marilyn Nance was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on February 14, 2023 and January 29, 2025.