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Per e-mail from Frank Goodyear, BCMA Co-Director: On 5/24/16, 9:04 PM, "Frank Goodyear" <fgoodyear@bowdoin.edu> wrote: Dear Laura, We learned earlier this evening that Olive Pierce passed away recently. This is sad news. She was a terrific woman, and it was a joy to exhibit her work last winter. Could you please update her life dates in Embark? Many thanks, Frank Sent from my iPhone ---------------------------------- OBITUARY FOR OLIVE PIERCE: http://knox.villagesoup.com/p/olive-r-pierce/1530777 Olive R. Pierce May 31, 2016 Rockland — Olive R. Pierce, a resident of Rockland and Marsh Island, died May 23, 2016, at age 90. Olive photographed in Massachusetts and Maine for more than 40 years. In the 1960s, she documented conditions at a Cambridge housing project and hearings regarding allegations of police brutality and affordable housing before the Cambridge City Counsel. Her photographs of students at the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, Cambridge, Mass. were published in a 1986 book entitled, "No Easy Roses: A Look at the Lives of City Teenagers." Thereafter, Olive spent 10 years documenting a lobster fishing community in Maine, and in 1996, published "Up River: The Story of a Maine Fishing Village." In 1999, she traveled to Iraq to document the plight of children suffering under economic sanctions. Twice named a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Harvard, her work is in the collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.; the Portland Museum of Art, Portland; and the Farnsworth Museum, Rockland. Her photographs have been exhibited in approximately twenty one-person shows since 1964. Her last show, Olive Pierce: Photographing a Maine Fishing Community, was exhibited from October 2015 through January 2016, at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick. In 2002, she was featured as part of the Maine Masters series, broadcast on Maine Public Broadcasting Network. In 2007, her work was archived at the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library and featured at an exhibit entitled, Retrospective: 40 Years of Work, at Duke University, Durham, N.C. Olive often used her photography to sharpen viewers’ attention to social issues. For example, in 2003, the Bridges for Peace movement organized over 1,000 people on 35 bridges throughout Maine to protest the Iraq war. These protests gave rise to counter protesters who supported the war, and at times angry and physical confrontations between the two groups. Olive documented both groups and in June 2013 organized an exhibit of her photographs at the Damariscotta American Legion hall, which was attended by approximately 100 people from both sides of the issue. Olive intended the event as an opportunity to talk and to build respect between the groups and at the end the Legion auxiliary president embraced the organizer of the protest movement. Of her work, Pierce said: “My photographs are born of a desire to see the world as a harmonious place. I am aware of course that my vision is at odds with what I read daily in the newspapers and observe with my own eyes. I am the listener at the lecture who raises her hand to ask anxiously, "What can I do?" I can see the pleased but tired lecturer leaning over the podium and saying, “Just do the thing you do best.” What I do most, if not best is to poke around in the dark and dusty corners of my ignorance, using my pen and camera to make a record.” Olive is survived by her sister Sarah Bradshaw of Brookline, Mass., her children Laurence Pierce and Anne Pierce of Cambridge, Mass. and Elizabeth Pierce of Arlington, Mass., as well as six grandchildren.