The Museum of Modern Art has been acquiring photographs since 1930. The department has become synonymous with some of the most famous artists in that medium, and from October 2017 to April 2018, the museum will be auctioning off more than 400 prints from esteemed artists such as Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams at Christie’s in New York.
MoMA became the first American museum to establish a department dedicated to photography all the way back in 1940. This helped pave the way for photography to be seen as an art, and today, MoMA is home to over 30,000 prints. It is considered one of the world’s most significant photography collections.
(The Museum of Modern Arts/Christie’s)
According to Christie’s, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and her fellow collectors and philanthropists, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan, were known as the “daring ladies.” It was their vision to create the first American institution dedicated solely to modern art, and in November 1929, MoMA first opened its doors.
The three women also recruited businessman and collector A. Conger Goodyear as the museum’s first president. They wanted to create a center for the arts that “would be free of the constraints typically encountered by other museums.” The original trustees included Paul J. Sachs, associate director of Harvard’s Fogg Museum as well as a partner in investment firm Goldman Sachs, Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield, and philanthropist Josephine Boardman Crane. The first director of MoMA was 27-year-old Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who was an associate professor of art history at Wellesley College.
Barr also wanted the space to be dedicated to the ever-revolving world of modern art.
The first photographs in MoMA were images by Walker Evans, which were put in the museum in 1930. It was the only museum to feature photography throughout that entire decade. Ansel Adams worked to found the museum’s photography department with curator Beaumont Newhall in 1940. Later, Adams helped organize an exhibit titled Sixty Photographs: A Survey of Camera Esthetics, which featured the work of some of the time’s most innovative photographers.
“In many ways, the museum’s exhibition program helped to articulate the unique achievements of the artists, while contributing to a broader acceptance of the medium as an art form,” MoMA photography department curator Sarah Meister said to Christie’s.
MoMA’s photography department influence continued to grow until this day.
This year’s auction will span more than 100 years of photography’s history, from “1860s prints by Carleton Watkins and the brothers Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson, to works by standout figures of the early 20th century such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston and Edward Steichen.” There will also be key themes, such as photography by women. The funds raised will directly support the acquisitions program of the Department of Photography at MoMA.
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
