The Cincinnati Art Museum debuts its Nancy Rexroth collection October 2 as part of the 2026 FotoFocus Biennial, featuring an opening exhibition of more than 150 photographs, most of which have never been publicized. The exhibition, Secrets of My Power, marks 50 years since Rexroth’s acclaimed first self-published photobook, IOWA.
Rexroth, known for her deeply emotional images depicting her immersion into adult womanhood and the female experience, first began taking photos with a plastic toy camera called the Diana. The Diana was the sole camera used to take the photographs featured in IOWA. What started as an experiment with a toy became an influential attribute to the photography world, synonymous with Rexroth’s work and her artistic abilities with even the simplest of equipment.
IOWA’s images were mostly taken in and around Athens, Ohio, while Rexroth was completing her MFA at Ohio University during the early ’70s, and are described as a “waking dream of white clapboard houses, breathless movement, and half-remembered sadness” by CAM. Rexroth completed many contemplative self portraits during that time, including Behind, Touch, Self-Portrait with My Mother and In Between, Self Portrait in My Living Room, Athens, Ohio. Both will be included in Secrets of My Power.
Rexroth’s work was known in the photography world as having themes of defiance, edge, and a strong feminist perspective. She is described by CAM as an artist only spoken about in “hushed tones.” Due to her low profile and a hiatus she took from publishing work while she taught photography at Antioch College and Wright State University, there hadn’t been much known or talked about Rexroth, until now.
CAM’s curator of photography, Nathaniel M. Stein, connected with Rexroth to begin collaborating on the museum’s archive of her work almost instantly after he began his position at the museum nine years ago. Stein came to the job with an admiration for Rexroth’s work and calls his connection with her “serendipity.”
“When I got to my job in Cincinnati, I was looking at a mailing list that I inherited … and I saw an email address on it that looked like it belonged to a person who was maybe named Nancy Rexroth … and I was like, ‘What? Could this possibly be the same person?’ It was really meant to be,” Stein says. “I was full of passion and interest and curiosity about [Rexroth] and about what had become of her … and so I sort of thought, why don’t we know more about this person? Why hasn’t there been scholarship about this work? Where is it in museum collections?”
From then, work began on creating Rexroth’s first ever career retrospective. Rexroth, who has resided in the Cincinnati area since the mid-1980s, donated much of her life’s work to the museum, including tools and artistic materials, personal and professional papers, and more than 400 photographs, completing the collection in 2021.
Rexroth described her photos in IOWA as “the secrets of my lonely power,” which Stein thought, with a slight change, would be the perfect name for the exhibition.
Nancy Rexroth (American, b. 1946), "Girl in Car," Winchester Raceway, Virginia, 1968, gelatin silver print, Cincinnati Art Museum, The Nancy Rexroth Collection: Museum Purchase with funds provided by the Carl M. Jacobs Foundation, 2019.8, © The 1988 Rexroth Family Trust
“I took out the ‘lonely,’ which we’re not ignoring in the exhibition … a sense of isolation and a sense of grappling with a minor key in terms of emotions is definitely part of her work … but I wanted to emphasize not only the way that her photographs are—they are deeply emotional, but they all have a sense of mystery to them, which does make them sort of feel like secrets,” Stein says. “They speak to you in this very personal way. It’s almost like they don’t really speak to your mind; they speak directly into your body and your emotions.”
After years of meetings and time spent together, Stein says Rexroth has become very important to him. Therefore, he wanted the exhibition to recognize not only Rexroth’s work, but also who she is as a person.
“I think, really the most important thing is that, like many people who were raised female in that period of the 20th century … She was raised to be quiet, polite, and grateful. That is a kind of social positioning that women were, and obviously still are, being taught like, ‘this is how you’re supposed to be.’ And her creative work, in a way, is like the inner voice that just will not accept that … That’s why I wanted to emphasize the power,” Stein says.
Nancy Rexroth: Secrets of My Power will be on display October 2 to January 3, 2027, in Gallery 234 at Cincinnati Art Museum. Admission is free.
