This Philadelphia-born New York resident came of age when photographers in droves were turning away from interpreting events and issues they had witnessed to pursue highly personal and private visions of the world. Wanting none of that, McCurry was determined to become a photojournalist in foreign lands.

This graduate of Pennsylvania State University, Class of 1974, made his first trip to Afghanistan five years later. He did this by crossing the Pakistan border in disguise with his camera, arriving in Afghanistan shortly before the Russian invasion, on a journey that launched his career as a photojournalist.

A consistent major prizewinner and a member of Magnum Photos since '86, McCurry has been covering Yemen, Tibet, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, and India ever since.

His 31 featured photos - in this, his first local show - are fascinating, even compelling to look at. Some of them are challenging, provocative, and brilliant.

These aren't so much public events wrenched from the headlines, portrayals whose drama is available to all of us. Instead, they show isolated moments of decisive action, human dramas, or daily routines within families or among villagers or tribal groups, and also, interestingly, the vision of beautiful landscapes and people in their colorful native garb in picturesque settings.

It's as if the true McCurry, besides being the hard-driving photojournalist at the scene of some of our generations' most horrific wars, also was a homegrown American aesthete with an eye for the ageless beauty of many different cultures struggling to survive on distant shores to the east.

Although no particular insights about new directions in photojournalism or the history of such recent work are to be gleaned from the show, its high points are very specific. Chief among these is McCurry's famous "Afghan Girl" with haunting green eyes.

This photo evokes a sense of the universal in the face of a devastated child, age 12, who had just lost her parents in a Russian raid (National Geographic cover, June 1985). This is a truly superb show.

From the faculty

Most of these two dozen artist-teachers lent one item, but Bill Scott, a very active collector, sent nine. These range from signature oils by Mitzi Melnicoff and Eileen Goodman to a Brian Novatny figure painting casually done, and Jurgen Stimpfig's blocky abstract painting in which flatness jumps to the sound of color.

Items lent by Dean Jeff Carr, Jan Baltzell, Al Gury, Dan Miller, Bruce Samuelson, and David Wiesner carry a graphic punch.

These teachers share an intense appreciation of spirit and genuineness within art they collect.

Funky show

He is interested in objects, products, and materials that can be recycled, and digital images of birds of prey. He goes to considerable technical lengths to re-create and transform a simple gesture. And the funkiness of his 3-D pieces, combining simulated animals and trees in glazed ceramic, prevents his show from becoming too unsmiling.

Yet the mischief is that he's more satirist than humorist. It would be a mistake to dismiss his multimedia work too quickly.