Berenice Abbott: Changing New York
National Museum of Woman in the Arts, Washington DC
October 22, 1998 - January 19, 1999
To put it mildly, I have and have had a fantastic passion
for New York, photographically speaking.
Berenice Abbott
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington DC
www.nmwa.org
Updated 05.07.2019
National Museum of Woman in the Arts, Washington DC
October 22, 1998 - January 19, 1999
To put it mildly, I have and have had a fantastic passion
for New York, photographically speaking.
Berenice Abbott
Changing New York is photographer Berenice Abbott’s extraordinary documentation of New York from 1935 to 1939, when the city lost its 19th-century trappings to skyscrapers that would transform the skyline. From Oct. 22, 1998 through Jan. 19, 1999, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) exhibits 126 of the 305 unique vintage prints produced by Berenice Abbott for the project, many on display for the first time.
Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) arrived in New York as an aspiring sculptor from her native Ohio in 1918, then joined the expatriate exodus of artists to Paris in 1921. She began work in photographer Man Ray’s studio, beginning as a darkroom assistant and building a reputation as a portraitist of the cultural elite that rivaled his. Berenice Abbott found her aesthetic muse in Eugene Atget, and rescued his photographs documenting the streets of Paris. When she returned to New York in January 1929 to locate a publisher for a book of Eugene Atget’s photographs, Berenice Abbott was inspired by the change: "The new things that had cropped up in eight years, the sights of the city, the human gesture here sent me mad with joy and I decided to come back to America for good."
In 1935, with the patronage of the Museum of the City of New York, Berenice Abbott received funding from the Federal Arts Project that allowed her to work for the next four years creating her masterpiece, Changing New York. She concentrated not only on new skyscrapers and mass transit but also on subjects that were disappearing because of these changes. Although people are represented, architecture is the principal subject. Berenice Abbott and an assistant transported 60 pounds of camera equipment through the city streets of New York, including a large view camera with negatives measuring 8-by-10 inches, the same size as the prints.
As the project progressed, Berenice Abbott developed a more daring, experimental style, and she returned to some sites, such as the Flatiron Building, with new compositional ideas. She exposed the last negative for Changing New York in November 1938; due to financial and bureaucratic difficulties she never finished her master plan. Because of its support of Berenice Abbott’s work, the Museum of the City of New York received a unique set of mounted prints, as well as the project’s negatives, proofs, and research files.
The prints selected for this exhibition are arranged in eight geographical sections, mirroring Berenice Abbott’s approach to her subject: Wall Street, Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, Lower West Side, Middle West Side, Middle East Side, North of 59th Street, and Outer Boroughs. More than half of the project depicts sites in lower Manhattan, more due to historical importance than artistic preference.
Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York, 1935-1939 was organized by the Museum of the City of New York. It is curated by Bonnie Yochelson, consulting curator at MCNY, who will lecture at NMWA on Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. Yochelson is also the author of Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, the Complete WPA Project (The New Press), the first comprehensive catalogue of MCNY’s Abbott collection, available in NMWA’s museum shop in hardcover ($60).
Funding for the exhibition and the accompanying book has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Furthermore Division of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and Commerce Graphics, Ltd, Inc. Presentation at NMWA is generously supported by the Women’s Committee and the Members’ Exhibition Fund.
The exhibition will travel to der Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf, March 26—June 24, 1999; Musée Carnavalet in Paris, Oct. 11, 1999—Jan. 16, 2000; and the Stockholms Stadsmuseum, Feb.—May 2000.
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington DC
www.nmwa.org
Updated 05.07.2019
