American Photography 1890-1965 from the Collection
Museum of Modern Art, New York
February 20 - July 8, 1997
A major survey of seventy-five years of American photography, American Photography 1890-1965 from the Collection is on view at The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition covers the exceptionally rich period from the turn of the century through the mid-1960s, exploring one of the most inventive chapters in the history of the medium. A richly illustrated book accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator, Department of Photography, who organized the exhibition, and by critic and cultural historian Luc Sante.
The exhibition includes landmark pictures by all of the central figures of modern American photography, among them Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston. Generous selections of work by these and other leading photographers, together with many remarkable but unfamiliar pictures, contribute to a lively panorama of 180 works by more than 100 photographers.
The exhibition is organized in alternating groups of high-art and vernacular photographs to trace the lively evolution of the two opposing traditions in modern American photography—and the interchanges between them. "The scale of the exhibition and the range of the collection have allowed us not merely to represent the achievements of the key innovators but also to provide a coherent view of the tradition as a whole," remarks Peter Galassi. "There are many famous pictures here, but the exhibition is much more than an assembly of masterpieces."
The exhibition is accompanied by Recent Acquisitions: American Photography, a complementary display of approximately thirty photographic works by contemporary American artists. Included in this exhibition, also organized by Mr. Galassi, are works since 1980 by Robert Adams, Amy Arbus, Richard Artschwager, Ana Mendieta, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Joel Sternfeld, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others.
Publication: Published by The Museum of Modern Art, American Photography 1890-1965 from The Museum of Modern Art, New York is a 256-page volume containing 18 duotone illustrations and 5 color and full-page tritone plates of 183 works. (The book also appeared in foreign-language editions.)
Travel: American Photography 1890-1965 from The Museum of Modern Art, New York (as the exhibition was titled) opened at the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany, on April 24, 1995, and traveled to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; the Hasselblad Center, Goteborg, Sweden; the Musee National d'Art Moderne-Centre de Creation Industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The exhibition toured under the auspices of The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
Artists in American Photography 1890-1965 from the Collection
Berenice Abbott
Ansel Adams
Diane Arbus
Richard Avedon
Ralph Bartholomew
Ernest J. Bellocq
Henry Hamilton Bennett
Margaret Bourke-White
John G. Bullock
Rudy Burckhardt
Harry Callahan
Paul Caponigro
Walter Chappell
Alvin Langdon Coburn
Ted Croner
Imogen Cunningham
Charles H. Currier
Edward Curtis
Louise Dahl-Wolfe
Bruce Davidson
Roy DeCarava
Baron Adolf De Meyer
David Douglas Duncan
Harold Edgerton
Philip Elliott
Elliott Erwitt
Walker Evans
Louis Faurer
Grancel Fitz
Robert Frank
Lee Friedlander
William A. Garnett
Arnold Genthe
Laura Gilpin
L.S. Glover
John Gutmann
Charles Harbutt
Lewis W. Hine
Charles Hoff
Clifton Johnson
Frances Benjamin Johnston
Helen Levitt
Simpson Kalisher
Gertrude Kasebier
Andre Kertesz
Darius Kinsey
Irwin Klein
William Klein
Dorothea Lange
Clarence John Laughlin
Russell Lee
Leon Levinstein
Jerome Liebling
Edwin Hale Lincoln
O. Winston Link
George Piatt Lynes
Gjon Mili
Lisette Model
Tina Modotti
Arthur S. Mole and John D. Thomas
Charles Moore
Barbara Morgan
Wright Morris
Nickolas Muray
Arnold Newman
Paul Outerbridge
Gordon Parks
Irving Perm
Eliot Porter
William B. Post
William H. Rau
Robert Rauschenberg
James Bartlett Rich
Jacob Riis
George H. Seeley
Charles Sheeler
Aaron Siskind
Charles Norman Sladen
Erwin Smith
W. Eugene Smith
Frederick Sommer
Edward Steichen
Ralph Steiner
Alfred Stieglitz
Paul Strand
John Swope
John Szarkowski
Doris Ulmann
U.S. Army Signal Corps
U.S. Navy
James Van Der Zee
Adam Clark Vroman
Weegee (Arthur Fellig)
Dan Weiner
Edward Weston
Clarence H. White
Minor White
Garry Winogrand
Willard Worden
and three unidentified photographers
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART - MoMA
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