The Reece Museum Exhibition Publications

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Introduction

Wonderlands explores the intersection of tourism, religion, and folklore with natural beauty, preservation, and decay in southern Appalachia. The title of the series draws inspiration from novelist Charles Baxter’s collection of essays about fiction writing, Wonderlands: Essays on the Life of Literature, in which he describes settings that reflect a heightened psychological atmosphere in specific literary works. “Wonderlands are caused by, or are expressive of, emotional instability, estrangement, fantasy, and solitude,” Baxter writes.


The exhibition focuses on settings that evoke characteristics of wonderlands in counties of western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and southeastern Virginia. Roadside attractions, religious iconography, relics, and verdant landscapes create a psychic experience that is at once eerily still and emotionally charged. The most recent photographs in the series capture tragic destruction against the backdrop of natural beauty after Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the region in 2024. In conversation with the photographs are a selection of Appalachian artifacts from the Reece Museum’s collection, creating a unique dialogue that connects visual art and material culture.


Tema Stauffer is a photographer whose work examines the social, economic, and cultural landscape of American spaces. She is an associate professor of photography at East Tennessee State University. Her work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions internationally. In 2018, Daylight Books published a monograph of her Upstate series portraying the lingering legacy of American industrial and agricultural history in and around Hudson, New York. Daylight Books released her second monograph, Southern Fiction, in 2022. This body of work documents the history of the American South using its literary tradition as a road map, focusing on environments which have shaped the imaginations of 20th-century Southern writers. Her current series, Wonderlands, explores the intersection of tourism, religion, and folklore with natural beauty, preservation, and decay in southern Appalachia. Her work has received numerous research grants from ETSU’s Research Development Committee, along with a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship Award in 2021. Solo exhibitions of these series have been widely exhibited at museums, galleries, and universities throughout the South. Her work is represented by Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville.


Production of the Wonderlands exhibition was made possible by a Research Funding Program Award (2024) and a Summer Research Award (2024) from the College of Arts and Sciences at East Tennessee State University.

Start Date

1-20-2026

End Date

5-22-2026

Table of Contents

  • 1: Introduction
  • 3-4: Wonderlands: An Essay by Francesca Romeo
  • 5-30: Photographs & Artifacts
  • 31-32: Appalachian Artifacts in Conversations with Wonderlands
  • 33-61: Photographs & Artifacts
  • 63: Reece Museum Collections Statements
  • 65: Colophon & Acknowledgements

Exhibition

Tema Stauffer (Curation)

Publication Contribution

Spenser Brenner (Design & Layout); BMC Creative (Printing)

Reece Museum Staff

Rebecca Proffitt (Director); Spenser Brenner (Exhibition Coordinator); Savannah Bennett (Collections Manager); Ashley Gregg (Education Curator)

Wonderlands

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