Historic Daguerreotypes at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum Are Dazzling Examples of Early American Photography

Cambridge, MA (January 8, 2002) —A Curious and Ingenious Art: Reflections on Daguerreotypes at Harvard presents more than 60 images from Harvard University’s collection of historic daguerreotypes that will be on display at the Fogg Art Museum January 19 through April 14, 2002.

The exhibition will include the original silver-coated plates, dating from the mid-1800s, that captured the reflections of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Swedish singing sensation Jenny Lind, the young Henry James, artist James McNeill Whistler, and the physicians at the Massachusetts General Hospital as the era of modern anesthesia was born.

Daguerreotypy, invented in 1839 by the Frenchman Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, was a method of capturing an image projected by a camera obscura onto silver-coated copper plates. In this process, the plates were sensitized with iodine vapor, exposed in a camera, developed with mercury vapor, and fixed with a solution of sodium thiosulfate. The result was a single, unique image.

"This early process remains almost unsurpassed in producing images of near-grainless detail and extraordinary tonal rendition," said curator Melissa Banta, Adler curatorial associate in the Weissman Preservation Center at the Harvard University Library.

"A Curious and Ingenious Art brings together, for the first time, a representative sampling of Harvard’s internationally significant but relatively unknown collection of daguerreotypes," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "These works are extraordinary examples of early photography in this country and Americans’ first reactions to the camera."

After word of Daguerre’s process spread to America, Boston became a center of experimentation with the new technique. American ingenuity brought the daguerreotype to a new standard of artistic and technical excellence, and many in the Harvard community formed close relationships with the leading Boston studios.

Most of the daguerreotypes were made for, by, and of members of the university community and have been part of Harvard’s holdings for more than 150 years. The collection holds pioneering examples of the medium as tool for scientific research and artistic expression. It includes the first detailed daguerreotypes of the moon, taken through the telescope (then the world’s largest) at the Harvard College Observatory in 1851; portraits of slaves taken in 1852 by Joseph T. Zealy for natural historian Louis Agassiz; physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital performing some of the first operations under ether in 1847; an image of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s five-year-old son, Waldo, just months before he died of scarlet fever in 1842; and portraits of author Harriett Beecher Stowe.

The leading daguerreotypists of the day are represented in the exhibition, including Matthew Brady and Bostonians Albert Sands Southworth, Josiah Johnson Hawes, and John Adams Whipple. Banta selected images from the university’s core holdings of 472 daguerreotypes across 14 repositories. She used the wealth of archival information available for each image to write A Curious & Ingenious Art: Reflections on Daguerreotypes at Harvard, the book that accompanies the exhibition.

Deborah Martin Kao, the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Fogg, said those who visit the exhibition may be surprised by the extraordinary detail captured by the daguerreian process. "Daguerreotypes are made on silver-plated copper," she said. "It’s essentially like making a photograph on a mirror. You don’t have things like paper fibers impeding your reading of the image. The mirrored surface also gives it a jewel-like quality. It’s also incredibly ephemeral—depending on what angle you’re viewing it at, you’ll see the object or your own reflection."

About the Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are among the world’s leading arts institutions, with the Arthur M. Sackler, Busch-Reisinger, and Fogg art museums, the Straus Center for Conservation, the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an excavation project in western Turkey. The 150,000 objects in the art museums’ collections range in date from ancient times to the present and come from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Each museum also has an active program of special exhibitions that promotes new scholarship in its areas of focus.

The Harvard University Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. As an integral part of the Harvard community, the three Art Museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.

For more than a century, the Harvard University Art Museums have been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and are renowned for their role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.

Location and Hours
The Fogg Art Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum are located at 32 Quincy Street in Cambridge. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum is located next door at 485 Broadway. Each Museum is a short walk from the Harvard Square MBTA station.

Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., and the Museums are closed on national holidays. Admission is $5; $4 for seniors; $3 for students; and free for those under 18 years of age. The Museums are free to everyone all day on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, 10 a.m. until noon. The Harvard University Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.