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Murray Riss

One of the most acclaimed artist in the Mid-South, Murray Riss has been working in photography for the majority of his life. He received his master's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, and came to Memphis at the request of Ted Rust to establish a photography department at Memphis College of Art, where he taught for nearly 20 years.

His work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the George Eastman House Museum of Photography; and in solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Harvard University. In 1975 he received an NEA Individual Artist Fellowship which granted him the opportunity to live and teach in Israel for a year. In 1991, he was asked to head up the fundraiser "Works of Heart" benefiting the Child Advocacy Center, a project that received as much of his passion as the art he creates. And in 2004, Riss was asked by True Story Pictures to participate in their acclaimed project, The Arts Interviews, a series of in-depth, life story interviews with significant regional artists.