Harvard's Fogg Art Museum Given Four Large Collections of Important Photographic Works

Collections Strengthen Museum's Position as Center for Study of Documentary Photography

CAMBRIDGE, MA (January 27, 2003)-The Fogg Art Museum has acquired four major collections of photographs totaling 10,000 photos and 40,000 negatives from Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. Offering exceptional insight into U.S. social history and including important photographic works of art, the collections are on permanent loan to the Fogg, where they are more accessible to students, scholars, and the public. Featuring works by Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Lewis Hine, Timothy O'Sullivan, Edward Weston, and Minor White, the collections given to the Fogg include:

• Fine Art Photographs, a 5,000-image collection including works by Timothy O'Sullivan, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and many others.
• The Social Museum Collection, more than 5,000 photographs and 1,000 diagrams compiled in the early part of the 20th century by Francis Greenwood Peabody, who established the Social Museum at Harvard in 1903 and founded the university's department of social ethics in 1906.
• The American Professional Photographers Collection, 40,000 negatives and 1,000 photographs assembled from commercial U.S. photographers active between the 1930s and 1960s.
• The Boston Elevated Railway Negative Collection, more than 600 glass-plate negatives that document the building of rapid transit lines in Boston and its surrounding towns in the early 1900s.

"The Fogg Art Museum is a very appropriate home for these important collections that chronicle key moments in the evolution of U.S. culture and industry and that showcase the work of some of this country's finest photographers," said Marjorie Cohn, acting director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "Social documentary photography forms the heart of the Fogg's collection-particularly works created during the 1930s through the 1950s. A complement to these existing strengths, the four collections will be given new life through the investigations of Fogg scholars and will be used as interdisciplinary resources within the Harvard community."

The collections join the Fogg Art Museum's unparalleled collection of documentary photography, which now comprises nearly 35,000 images and 40,000 negatives with these new additions. A collection of broad scope and importance, the Fogg's photography holdings boast particular strength in 20th-century American documentary and contemporary photography, with an emphasis on diverse and alternative photographic processes. The Ben Shahn Collection-the artist's collection, over 4,000 works, of his own photographs-was a gift of Shahn's widow in 1970 and is the primary collection of his photographic oeuvre. Other significant research collections within the Fogg's department of photographs include more than 400 "imperial" size photographic portraits by Mathew B. Brady as well as significant representation of works by Ansel Adams, Sarah Choate Sears, Edward Steichen, and Aaron Siskind. The collection also includes more than 17,000 19th-century portraits in the form of cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards, made by hundreds of European and American studios.

About the Collections

Fine Art Photographs-Among the highlights of this 5,000-image collection are a daguerreotype by G. K. Warren titled Harriet Beecher Stowe and Calvin Ellis Stowe, 1852; Timothy O'Sullivan's albumen silver prints of the American West for the so-called Wheeler survey, including Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle, New Mexico, 1873; Frederick Evans' platinum print of Lincoln Cathedral, 1896; Edward Weston's Nude, 1935; Walker Evans' celebrated photograph Saratoga Springs, 1930; Aaron Siskind's image of abstracted stone walls in Martha's Vineyard, 1954; 12 prints from Robert Frank's landmark The Americans, 1955; Josef Koudelka's Czechoslovakia, 1968; and Lee Friedlander's Mt. Rushmore, 1969.

The Social Museum Collection-Francis Greenwood Peabody, who established the Social Museum at Harvard University in 1903 and founded its department of social ethics in 1906, assembled this teaching collection of more than 5,000 photographs and 1,000 diagrams related to the international social reform movement that burgeoned in the early 20th century. The collection was used through the 1930s to promote the comparative study of social conditions and institutions in various countries or world regions related to charity, crime, education, health, housing, immigration, industrial problems, race, recreation, and religious institutions. The collection contains important bodies of work by such pioneering social documentary photographers as Lewis Hine (Pittsburgh Survey series, c. 1908), Frances Benjamin Johnston (Hampton Institute series, c. 1900), and Waldemar Franz Herman Titzenthaler (Types of German Workers series, c. 1905).

The American Professional Photographers Collection-Between 1975 and 1977, Barbara Norfleet, longtime visionary curator and director of the Carpenter Center's photographic collections, assembled about 40,000 negatives and 1,000 vintage photographs from commercial U.S. photographers who were active between the late 1930s and the early 1960s. The collection contains carefully composed and staged images of cheerful families from the 1950s, consumer goods, the working world, and community activities. Highlights include Joe Steinmetz's photographs of white-collar leisure in Philadelphia and Florida; Harry Annas Studio's idealized pictures of rural life in and around Lockhart, Texas; and Francis J. Sullivan's wholesome depictions of middle-class domesticity in New England.

The Boston Elevated Railway Negative Collection-The so-called BERy collection is part of a much larger archive of approximately 30,000 glass-plate negatives that document the building of rapid transit lines in Boston and its surrounding towns in the early 1900s. The more than 600 negatives at Harvard, together with the others held by the Cambridge Historical Commission and the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, provide an invaluable record of the city's architecture and of the construction techniques used to build the Boston Elevated Railway lines.

"These are exceptional collections that contain masterpieces of the history of photography and unique information for researchers," said Deborah Martin Kao, the Fogg's Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography. "Access to these collections will provide opportunities to gain new insights into the development of this artistic medium and its role in chronicling history, and scholars in the life sciences will surely encounter exciting avenues to examine society in this era."

Kao, with photography department curatorial associate Michelle Lamuniére and Kevin Moore, a special assistant for cataloguing and collections management, has made the photographs immediately available even as the cataloguing continues. The collections can be explored at the Fogg Art Museum during public hours or by appointment at the Agnes Mongan Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

The Carpenter Center (the only Le Corbusier-designed building in the U.S.), located adjacent to the Fogg on Quincy Street in Cambridge, houses the Art Museums' Sert gallery and café, the Harvard Film Archive, and active studios and workshops for the University's department of visual studies. After the retirement of longtime curator Barbara Norfleet in 2001, the University transferred the collection to the Fogg Art Museum, where it could be archived and stored in an appropriate environment and be accessible to students, scholars and the public.

About the Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are one of the world's leading arts institutions, with the Arthur M. Sackler, Busch-Reisinger, and Fogg art museums, the Straus Center for Conservation, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an excavation project in western Turkey.

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., Sunday 1 - 5 p.m.; the Museums are closed on national holidays. Admission is $6.50; $5 for seniors; $5 for students; and free for those under 18 years of age. The Museums are free to everyone Saturday mornings, 10 a.m. - noon. The Harvard University Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. More detailed information is available at 617-495-9400 or on the Internet at www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

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For more information on this appointment or the Harvard University Art Museums, please contact:

Matthew Barone
Harvard University Art Museums
tel 617-495-2397; fax 617-496-9762
mbarone@fas.harvard.edu

or

Kim Gilbert/Allison Derusha
Resnicow Schroeder Associates
tel 212-671-5157; fax 212-595-8354
kgilbert@resnicowschroeder.com
aderusha@resnicowschroeder.com