Artists Making Photographs @Whitney

JTF (just the facts): 5 sets of works by John Chamberlain, Robert Rauschenberg, Lucas Samaras, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol, displayed in the small Gilman Gallery on the mezzanine level of the museum. (No photography is allowed at the Whitney, so there are no installation shots.) Here’s the breakdown:

Chamberlain: 1 sculpture and 1 color photograph
Rauschenberg: 1 large painting and 3 black and white silver prints
Samaras: 1 sculpture, 1 mixed media piece, and 6 Polaroids
Ruscha: 1 drawing and 2 black and white photographs
Warhol: 1 painting and 6 black and white photo booth strips

Comments/Context: While most artists confine their exploration to mastering the nuances one medium, a growing number use a variety of different tools and approaches (often intermixed) to make their art. The current show at the Whitney steps back into the historical record of the 20th century to look at how artists who were best know as painters or sculptors also used photography to examine their ideas.

The pairing of a 1963 John Chamberlain twisted sculpture made of car parts with a 1989 photograph of swirling, distorted, blurred swaths of color was the most surprising and enlightening section of the show for us. We didn’t know that Chamberlain was also a photographer, and the works showed a clear commonality in their approach to form and color.

The other four artists (Rauschenberg, Samaras, Ruscha and Warhol) were all more widely known to have been using photography as part of their artistic process, so their inclusion here was more expected. The group of Samaras works seemed most connected by the artist’s interest in manipulating and controlling the processes for making the art, to extend the normal boundaries of those mediums. The Warhol grouping of a large multi-panel Jackie painting with several photo booth images was perhaps the most obvious of the pairings, since it is so widely known that Warhol used photographs as the basis for most of his portraits.

The Rauschenberg and Ruscha combinations were the most obscure to our eyes. While both artists had clearly been active photographers, the specific images selected to go with the paintings and drawings were harder to reconcile. We were unable to connect the dots to draw much meaning from these pairings.

So while the concept of this exhibition is an excellent one, the execution is a little uneven. I would have liked to have seen more interrelationships and back and forth between the mediums and more explanation for how photography was used by each of these artists (particularly for Rauschenberg). That said, the Chamberlain alone is worth a short detour.

Collector’s POV: Warhol, Ruscha and Samaras photographs are all generally readily available in the secondary markets. Rauschenberg’s photography is more scarce at auction. This was the first time I had ever seen a photograph by John Chamberlain, so his photographic work is likely even more hard to come by.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Artists Making Photographs
Through Spring 2009

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Peter Bialobrzeski, Lost in Transition

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2007 by Hatje Cantz. Includes 53 color images, taken in 28 cities around the world, with an essay by Michael Glasmeier. (Cover image at right.)

Comments/Context: There is an old song by the Band called Twilight that has a chorus that goes something like this:
Don’t send me no distant salutations
Or silly souvenirs from far away
Don’t leave me alone in the twilight,
Cause twilight is the loneliest time of day
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German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski’s newest pictures are all taken at this fleeting moment in the day, when dusk is falling, the lights have just come on, and the cooler breeze gives you a shiver. His subjects are the futuristic mega-constructions that are multiplying all over the world, rapidly gobbling up the old and remaking the world in their own distinct science fiction aesthetic. His pictures have no people, no identifiers of place, no signs or landmarks to give away their locations; whether we are in Abu Dhabi or Bremen, Jakarta or Zurich, it just doesn’t seem to matter. When small towns are overrun by chain stores, we bemoan the “Starbucksification” of the neighborhood; Bialobrzeski’s images remind us that this homogenization is happening on a much larger scale, as cities across the globe make the transition from old to new.
While most photographs of great buildings from the 1920s and 1930s had a romantic aura, these pictures seem to have a more complex set of emotions mixed together. Some of the darker images seem to be precursors to a Metropolis or Blade Runner style world, a neo–noir movie in the making. Others are more mundane, with grubby construction sites encroaching on older warehouses and worn out factories.
This is not to say that these are not beautiful images; indeed they are. One of my favorite pastimes with this book has been to flip through the images slowly, simply looking at the sublime palette of sky colors that Bialobrzeski has captured in this series: greys and soft blacks, mauves and deep purples, and a nuanced spectrum of blues, all carefully sequenced. Due to the stark fluorescent lights that inhabit nearly every locale, the images seem to radiate a silent and lonely brightness.
Overall, this is a book that provokes some complicated thinking: about architecture and cities, about the “modern world”, and about how our collective society is evolving around us.

The artist’s website can be found here.

Collector’s POV: There was an exhibition of Bialobrzeski’s images from this series (printed 40×50) at the Laurence Miller Gallery last fall (here), which we somehow missed. His previous books, particularly Neon Tigers, have been well received.

For more on Bialobrzeski, see an interview (here) and another review of the book (here) at Conscientious.

Dancers, Photographs by Philip Trager

JTF (just the facts): Published in 1992 by Bullfinch Press. Includes 81 black and white images, with essays by Bill T. Jones, Joan Acocella, David Freedberg and Mark Morris. (Cover shot at right.)

Comments/Context: While New York is indeed a great place to see photography, it is also an amazing melting pot of modern dance. This past weekend, we took the whole family (including our elementary school aged kids) to see a performance by Pilobolus (site here), a dance company known for its jaw dropping athleticism. We enjoy a wide variety of modern dance, and try to take advantage of the broad array of styles that are regularly performed all over New York. My particular favorite is Mark Morris (site here); my wife’s is Paul Taylor (site here), and we often catch any number of other companies at the Joyce Theater (site here), one of the great venues for modern dance in America.

The reason for this preamble is that I have been wanting to write about Philip Trager’s spectacular book, Dancers, for several weeks now, but it somehow hadn’t found its way to the top of the pile. Unlike the carefully lit, interior dance photography most collectors are familiar with (Barbara Morgan’s iconic images of Martha Graham being perhaps the most easily recognizable), Trager made his pictures in natural light, out in the open air, on grassy hillsides and in wooded glades. The resulting images of over 35 different dance companies/choreographers take us beyond dance as a “production” and back to a more primal quality, of dance as an exuberant, living, emotional response to being human.

The book offers a glimpse of a wide spectrum of modern dance styles, from quiet and intimate solo dances, to the high energy, expressionistic movements of larger groups and ensembles, from classical beauty to unsettling avant garde. In these large pictures, Trager has captured the individuality of the various dancers, dramatically singling out particular gestures and movements that epitomize varying approaches to their collective craft. There are a great many truly beautiful photographs in this book; if you plan to own only one book of dance photography, this is the one you should have in your library. And by the way, you’ll have to make room for it, as the book itself is nearly 16 inches high.

Collector’s POV: Philip Trager’s work is not particularly available in the secondary markets, and his longtime dealer, John Stevenson, recently closed up his retail presence, so I’m not at all certain who is representing Trager at this point or where to find prints if collectors are interested in following up. There are also several additional books by Trager which chronicle his well made photographs of the villas of Palladio and the architecture of Connecticut and New York.

Auction Preview: First Open Post-War and Contemporary Art, March 11, 2009 @Christie’s

Christie’s is offering a solid mix of well known and emerging photography (including 4 images by Vik Muniz) in its First Open Post-War and Contemporary Art sale on March 11. (Catalog cover at right.) There are a total of 24 photo lots on offer, with a total high estimate of $646000. Here are the statistics for the auction:

Total Low Lots (high estimate below $10000): 3
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $20000
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 19
Total Mid Estimate: $496000
Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 2
Total High Estimate: $130000
Here are the photographers represented in the sale as background:
Matthew Barney
Maurizio Cattelan
Sharon Core
Gardar Eide Einarsson
Elger Esser
Robert Gober
Craigie Horsfield
Huang Yan
Vik Muniz
Gabriel Orozco
Pierre et Gilles
Richard Prince
Lucas Samaras
Cindy Sherman
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Wang Qingsong
Zhang Huan
Given our recent discussions of Chinese contemporary photography, we were interested to see strong works by Huang Yan, Wang Qingsong, and Zhang Huan all included in this sale.
March 11
Christie’s
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Auction Preview: Contemporary Art, March 10, 2009 @Sotheby’s

Following up on its success with photographs in its London contemporary art sales last month, Sotheby’s has brought together a smaller, less exciting group of images for its lower end New York sale on March 10. (Catalog cover at right.) There are only 10 lots of photography in this sale, for a total estimate of $180000. Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low lots (high estimate $10000 or lower): 4
Total Low estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $30000

Total Mid lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 6
Total Mid estimate: $150000

Total High lots (high estimate over $50000): 0
Total High estimate: NA

Since there are only 10 photo lots in this sale, we thought we’d list all of the photographers represented as background:

James Casebere
Andreas Gursky
Anselm Kiefer
Louise Lawler
Florian Maier–Aichen
Shirin Neshat
Cindy Sherman
Laurie Simmons
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Joyce Tenneson

By the way, someone at Sotheby’s needs to pay some attention to the “Medium” categories that are found in the sidebar of the auction listings. In this case, only 2 lots in the sale are categorized as photographs, when there are clearly 10 lots that fall into this category. My guess is that someone not familiar with photography is doing the indexing, so lots that are “cibachrome prints” for example are not being captured as photographs. Collectors out there should work through the lots one by one rather than using the index until they make it more accurate.

Contemporary Art
March 10, 2009

Sotheby’s
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Auction Preview: Under the Influence, March 9, 2009 @Phillips

The rush of Contemporary Art week is upon us in New York, with the Armory and other art shows beginning later this week, followed by a string of lower end contemporary auctions the following week. Phillips De Pury & Company is up first with their Under the Influence sale on March 9. (Catalog cover at right.)

As usual, we’re only interested in the photography buried in the contemporary art sales, and so we’ll focus our comments and numbers on those lots only. There are a total of 44 photo lots in this sale, for a total estimate of $682000. Here are the stats:

Total Low lots (high estimate of $10000 and lower): 24
Total Low estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $142000

Total Mid lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 18
Total Mid estimate: $340000

Total High lots (high estimate above $50000): 2
Total High estimate: $200000

Phillips is always out on the edge in terms of offering work that is beyond the usual suspects. While Araki, Baldessari, Beecroft, Crewdson, Goldin, Prince, Ruscha and Tillmans are here, there is a long list of other photographers in this sale who are either less well known or tend to be infrequently found in photo sales. I’ve included them below as reference:

Maria Abramovic
Eija–Liisa Ahtila
Doug Aitken
Carlos Amorales
Matthew Barney
Olaf Breuning
Minerva Cuevas
Gao Brothers
Tierney Gearon
Luis Gispert
Anthony Goicolea
Jill Greenberg
Fergus Greer
Justine Kurland
Dr. Lakra
Marcos Lopez
Walter Niedermayr
Gabriel Orozco
Tony Oursler
Res
Daniela Rossell
Elisa Sighicelli
Inez van Lamsweerde
Hellen van Meene
Vitali
Charlotta Westergren
Erwin Wurm
Yang Fudong

For our particular collection, the Ruscha parking lots (lot 116) and swimming pools (lot 117) would be our favorites of the works available in this sale.

Under the Influence
March 9, 2009

Phillips De Pury & Company
450 West 15th Street
New York, NY 10011

Elliott Erwitt’s New York @Houk

JTF (just the facts): A total of 22 black and white images, taken between the 1940s and 1980s, enlarged to 16×20 or reverse, framed in white and displayed in the main gallery space. The exhibit was designed in conjunction with the publication of Elliott Erwitt’s New York (teNues, 2008). (Marginal installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Elliott Erwitt’s New York isn’t a tough place. It isn’t gritty or scary or challenging. His images of quintessential New York moments and places are just the opposite: optimistic, light hearted, nostalgic, and laced with wry humor and tender jokes. Virtually every signature New York location or event is captured in this exhibit: from Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building and the World Trade Center, to 5th Avenue, the Metropolitan Museum, Central Park, train platforms, taxis, and eating Nathan’s hot dogs on the Coney Island boardwalk. In all of these places, Erwitt has captured people in the context of the city, with an eye for the romantic moment or composition. While there isn’t anything new to be found in this show, the consistency of his playful vision across the decades is clear.

The artist’s website can be found here. His page at Magnum Photos can be found here.

Collector’s POV: The recent prints in this exhibit are retailing for $4500 each. Erwitt’s work is routinely available at auction, generally under $5000, with a few key vintage prints pressing up toward $10000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Through March 7
745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10151

Collectors as Market Makers

There was a fascinating article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about Jose, David, and Alberto Mugrabi, the famous and powerful collectors of Warhols and other Pop and contemporary artists. (Article here.) With over 3000 works and over 800 Warhols in their collection, they have evolved into an entirely new kind of collecting animal: the market maker. Following over 100 auctions a year, the Mugrabis buy and sell their inventory and protect/defend/run up the prices of their artists all over the world. They are likely involved in one way or another in every major transaction of Warhol’s art that occurs on the planet. They collect on a scale and in a pattern unlike nearly all other collectors: they are full-time professionals.

This got me thinking about this collecting approach and its impact on the photography markets. We know of only a very small number of photography collectors that operate as market makers in any form, but there are a few that use this model. The challenge to this approach is that it requires enormous scale and meaningful financial resources. More importantly, it takes time to amass a significant inventory of any one artist’s best output (unless one buys an estate in one fell swoop) and then real effort to follow each and every transaction that occurs for that artist going forward.

It seems to us there are a couple of bright lines that define collectors. The first is when a collector makes those first handful of purchases that change his/her perspective from someone looking for decoration for their walls to someone fascinated and obsessed by the art and the artists. The second bright line comes when a collector evolves to the point that they are buying art they don’t really have room to display (we call this “buying for the box” and unfortunately, we would reluctantly place ourselves in this category). At this point, the collections are larger, more defined, and often more manic.

The Mugrabis and the others like them in the uppermost tier have moved beyond another final bright line. They are gathering inventory at such a pace and scale that they effectively start to corner the market in their areas of interest, which leads them to behave in ways that are wholly different from other collectors. We might call them pseudo dealers, or wholesalers, or just museums in the making. I’m not sure that we have any conclusion to offer here, other than given the fact that most major collectors are extremely wary of talking about themselves and their collecting activities in public, it was interesting to see the piece about the Mugrabis in the magazine section. Of course, when you are a market maker, you live in the bizarro world where big PR is actually a good thing.

Paul Graham, a shimmer of possibility @MoMA

JTF (just the facts): A total of 49 color images, displayed as 8 sequences of between 4 and 9 images each, and two single images. All of the images were taken between 2004 and 2006. The prints are made in varying sizes, framed in white, without mats and with very little wall text, and hung at varying heights in a two room gallery with a single dividing wall. The curator of the exhibition is Susan Kismaric. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I think British photographer Paul Graham is a complete unknown for most collectors. Even though he has had a nearly 30 year career, published a dozen high quality books, and made some memorable pictures, I think he has been overlooked by many, mostly because he isn’t easily categorized. While one might attach the labels “color” or “documentary” to his work, his isn’t the first name that comes up when you think of these terms, and so I’m afraid many folks have missed out on some amazing photography (ourselves included for the most part, I must admit).
The new show at the MoMA takes a sampling from his most recent work, a shimmer of possibility, a group of images he took during many trips across America from 2004 to 2006. What is surprising is that this work is not a group of standard, stand alone documentary pictures. Instead, the images are sequenced into spare narratives, with almost cinematic slices of time (reframing the subjects minute to minute) propelling the stories along, sometimes quite linearly but often in a more elliptical undirected flow.

In many ways, nothing much happens in these stories; they are tiny vignettes of ordinary life. Here are a few of the moments that are captured:

  • A woman eats takeout at a bus stop, and then smokes
  • A man camps out near a Jack-in-the-Box trash can
  • A girl with her toys on the sidewalk
  • A man mows the grass, as it begins to rain
  • Kids play basketball as the sun sets
  • A man sells flowers on a street corner
  • A man on a break savors a cigarette
The overall mood of these short stories is the same exhausted melancholy that permeates Alec Soth’s recent work. And yet, Graham’s economical narratives are oddly engaging and satisfying; the details all seem to matter a bit more. The exact moments when the rain falls on the man mowing the grass (sparkling in the sunlight), or when the smoker exhales, or when the basketball is released all have a hyper reality, saturated with our attention. And then there is a sense that life goes on – the open ended stories will all continue. While this show is relatively small, take your time to savor each thread; they’ll grow on you.
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The artist’s website can be found here. The 12 volume set of books published by Steidl can be found here.

Collector’s POV: Paul Graham’s work has been virtually unavailable in the secondary markets in the past few years, except for a few copies of his first book A1, The Great North Road, which have started to show up in the newer photo book auctions. Graham is represented in New York by Greenberg Van Doren Gallery (site here), who will be having a retrospective show of his work starting later in March.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Through May 18
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019
5B4’s review of the books can be found here.
UPDATE: My email has been full of readers with links and ideas for educating us further about Paul Graham (a few politely pointing out just how out of touch and misinformed we are). There is currently a show of the 2009 Deutsche Borse finalists up at the Photographers’ Gallery in London (site here). A second good resource is the Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London (site here), who has represented the artist for most of his career and has access to all of his work. Perhaps there is a real difference in knowledge of Graham’s work between working photographers and other photo “insiders” (who all know Graham well) and many collectors (particularly in America) who only know him tangentially.

Ruud van Empel: Souvenir, Dawn, Moon, World @Stux

JTF (just the facts): A total of 22 works (20 photographs and 2 bronze sculptures), displayed throughout the entry, the two lower galleries, and the upper galleries. The photographs are glossy Cibachrome prints, mounted to Dibond and plexiglass (not framed), all from 2008, ranging in size from approximately 33×24 for the smallest images up to wall sized murals. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: While digital manipulation has become the rule rather than the exception in new contemporary photography, Ruud van Empel’s approach is something altogether more radical than a simple touch up. His works are composed of literally thousands of fragments and components of various photographs, meticulously merged and constructed within the confines of his computer. His images of children in lush garden settings are at once realistically detailed and fantastically fabricated, creating a surreal world where beauty and innocence are mixed with a small dose of an undefined and unsettling undercurrent: what is really going on here?

Van Empel’s process leads to pictures that are extremely painterly, with lush colors and classical compositions. In a previous post on Van Empel, we touched on connections to Rousseau and Disfarmer (post here); during this visit, we were struck by the relationship to early Renaissance portraits and allegorical paintings, where figures were abstracted to represent an idealized version of a person, rather than anyone in specific. The children in these images are expressionless, with big eyes and flawless skin; at one level they are perfect, at another they are just a bit creepy.
Van Empel has several series of works progressing at the same time, all of which are represented in this show of new work. The World images are likely the most recognizable to collectors, with deadpan white and black children situated in idealized tropical rain forests and lagoons (complete with water droplets and amazing insects). The Venus series uses this same setting for a series of symbolic nudes. The Moon series follows a similar formula of formal children against a natural background, only this time the images are moonlit, bringing darker blues and greens into van Empel’s palette. The recent Dawn series has a more casual compositional style, with the children often resting in beds of flowers or lying in the leaves. While each of these projects has its own specific details, they all share the same general approach: the mix of natural beauty with the innocence of childhood, boiled down to neutral and artificial symbolic types.

A series of wholly different and much more personal pictures entitled Souvenir are shown in the upper galleries. In these images, van Empel constructs dense interior still lifes out of images of items from his childhood home. While many of the tokens and mementos have a kitchy quality to them, it is clear that each and every one has been wrapped in some personal significance or memory. Van Empel uses the same computer driven composite approach, and the resulting feeling of unreality of his other works is found in these smaller pictures as well. These pictures jump off the wall quite a bit less than the more vibrant tropical scenes, but perhaps show van Empel experimenting with new narrative directions beyond those which made him famous.

Overall, this is a terrific show, with many eye-popping works to draw your attention, many of the kids seeming even more surreal than in earlier images. There is a catalogue of van Empel’s new work entitled Ruud van Empel Photoworks available from the gallery for $50.

The artist’s website can be found here.
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Collector’s POV: The World, Venus, Moon and Dawn images in this show range from $14000 to $69000, with most in the $30000 range. The Souvenir series is priced between $9500 and $14000. The prints are in editions of various sizes, ranging from 7 to 13. The two white statues are $47000 each, in editions of 3. Van Empel’s work has only been available in the secondary markets since 2007, but has performed well, fetching prices from approximately $15000 to $45000. Given the originality of his work, it seems likely that these prices will continue to rise.
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
Through March 7th
530 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
Another review of this show can be found at The Year in Pictures here.

Small Museum Profile: Cantor Arts Center @Stanford University

If you have ever been to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, my guess is your memories are full of the astounding Rodins. Stanford has a massive collection of Rodin sculptures, displayed both inside the museum and outside in the garden, including The Gates of Hell, which is the epitome of a monumental work that is 100% more awe inspiring in person than via reproductions. What you might not remember is that this museum has a strong collection of photography, anchored by its collection of images by Eadweard Muybridge.

In what is now one of the most famous stories in the history of photography, Leland Stanford wanted to definitively find out whether a running horse had at least one foot on the ground at all times, and hired Muybridge to make a series of stop motion photographs to determine the truth. Muybridge went on to make studies for his book, Animal Locomotion, at Stanford’s farm in Palo Alto, CA, which later became Stanford University. Those pictures are now housed in the Cantor Arts Center.

The museum does not have a full time curator for photography, so the job is split between Betsy Fryberger (Curator of Prints and Drawings) who handles the 19th century work, and Hilarie Faberman (Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art) who handles the 20th and 21st century images. In general, photography is housed within the Prints and Drawings Department.

There are approximately 4000 images in the photography collection, with roughly 1650 of the images from the 19th century and the remainder (2350) from more recent times. Beyond the collection of Muybridge images, the Cantor Arts Center has strength in works by Robert Frank, Bill Brandt, Ansel Adams, and 19th century travel photography. On a going forward basis, the curators would like to develop the early modern collection, specifically German and Russian photography (so collectors out there, here’s where you can help).

In the past 10 years, the Cantor Arts Center has acquired approximately 700 images, with the bulk of those coming the past few years. The collection is being built via a combination of donations by patrons and artists and dedicated funds for photo acquisitions.

Unlike many smaller museums, the Cantor Arts Center always has a portion of the permanent collection of photography on view, often upstairs in the Contemporary galleries. The exhibition schedule for photography has been consistently active and of high quality. Here are a handful of the most recent shows:

  • Andy Warhol Photographs (2008)
  • Private and Public: Class, Personality, Politics, and Landscape in British Photography (2008)
  • Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks (2007)
  • In the American West: Photographs by Richard Avedon (2007)
  • Yosemite’s Structure and Textures: Photographs by Eadweard Muybridge, Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams, and Others (2007)
  • Beefcake: The Physique Photography of Dave Martin (2006)
  • Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky, 1982–2002 (2005)
  • Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement (2003)

The museum has also produced two solid publications in conjunction with recent shows: Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks and Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement.

Visitors can access the photography collection at the museum via direct contract with a registrar or curator/curatorial assistant. There is a print viewing room that can be reserved by appointment to look at specific works.

Overall, the Cantor Arts Center’s photography program seems to be well run and the collection merits your attention during any visit to the Bay Area. In the spirit of full disclosure, I did my graduate degree at Stanford and both our children were born at Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, so we are perhaps less than perfectly objective. That said, 4000 images, a strong exhibitions calendar, and a historic relationship with one of the masters of the medium speak for themselves.

Photography in Smaller Museums

When the firestorm around the proposed closing of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University started to swirl around (admirably led by Modern Art Notes), as a photography collector, one of the first questions I had, which I didn’t see asked anywhere else in all the discussion, was what exactly does the Rose have in its collection in terms of photography? The only mention photography got at all that I could see was a protest letter from photographer David Maisel, whose work is in the collection.

Of course, there is no easy way to get a simple answer to this question. Like many smaller museums, the Rose does not have its complete collection digitized and up on the Internet, nor does it have a stand alone photography curator who can be contacted. There have been few photography exhibitions at the Rose in the past years, so there is not much of a trail that can be followed in this way either. The only real way to answer this question is to button hole the Director (not practical in this situation), or perhaps find a willing trustee or accessions committee member who is excited about photography and has some information.

This got us thinking in a broader way about the photography housed in smaller museums. In the vast majority of cases, photography is one of many disciplines represented for these institutions, and so images that are in the collections are often stuck in the black hole of storage, rarely seeing the light of day. Even when photography is seen as a crucial part of the exhibition and education plan, and photographs are part of the normal rotation of shows, they still may not get the kind of focus we would like to see. As collectors, we are, of course, fascinated by what any individual museum might have in its storage boxes. Who knows what treasures are hiding there, underappreciated?

With this in mind, we have begun a process of reaching out to various smaller museums (in American and all over the world) to ask these very questions about their photography collections. We’ve designed a simple set of routine questions (sent via email) that cover the following areas:

Curators/Staff
Photography Collection Facts
Photography Collection Design
Acquisitions
Exhibitions/Publications
Accessing the Collection

Our goal here is to develop profiles of the photography collections at smaller museums and to bring those profiles to you, our audience of collectors. We think this benefits everyone. The museums get the word out to a targeted group of people who are interested in their collections and can be supporters, patrons, and even contributors on a going forward basis. (One important question we ask is what the museums are looking to add to their collections on a going forward basis; this information can help match potential donors with museums that want their prints.) On the other side, the collectors get a better view into museums that hold works or have programs that they are interested in, so they can visit or get involved as appropriate.

Later today, we will begin this series with a profile of the photography collection of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. If you are a museum curator, trustee, or accessions committee member out there (anywhere in the world), or simply a supporter of a particular museum and would like to see that institution profiled as part of this series, just send us an email (info@dlkcollection.com) and we’ll get the questionnaire out to you. We hope everyone will find these profiles as interesting as we do. There are literally hundreds of small museums out there with amazing photography collections, and we want to be a strong voice in getting the word out about what they’re up to.

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