Throughout the course of her career, visual artist Marilyn Nance has produced photographs of unique moments in the cultural history of the U.S. and the African Diaspora, and culminating in an archive of images of late 20th century African American life. A two-time finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography for her body of work on African American spiritual culture in America, Nance has photographed the Black Indians of New Orleans, an African village in South Carolina, churches in Brooklyn, and the first Black church in America. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Library of Congress, and has been published in The World History of Photography, History of Women in Photography, and The Black Photographers Annual. Nance is the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Photography (2000 and 1989), Nonfiction Literature (1993), and the New York State Council of the Arts Individual Artists Grant (1987). A graduate of New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (Tisch School of the Arts), Nance holds a B.F.A. in Communications Graphic Design from Pratt Institute, and an MFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art.