In 1995 the acquisition of 165 superb photographs made between 1839 and the mid-20th century allowed the Gallery to begin building a truly comprehensive collection surveying the art of photography in Europe and America from the origins of the medium to the present. With these gifts in hand, the Trustees decided to begin actively to collect photographs in 1990 and founded the department of photographs, the youngest of our curatorial divisions.Īt first, using the Stieglitz Collection as both a model and touchstone for the quality and significance of each work, the museum began to acquire in great depth the art of important American photographers including Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, André Kertész, Frederick Sommer, and Paul Strand.
In addition to focusing attention on the art of photography, these shows brought the Gallery important donations, such as Virginia Adams’s gift of the Museum Set of photographs by her late husband, Ansel Adams, and a large group of pictures by the distinguished American photographer Walker Evans, donated by Kent and Marcia Minichiello.
#DC PHOTO VIEW SERIES#
Other highlights are exceptionally rare examples of Stieglitz's earliest work made in Europe in the 1880s and 1890s, as well as studies of New York from the 1890s through the 1930s.ĭespite the importance of the Stieglitz Collection, the National Gallery of Art did not begin to exhibit photography until the 1980s, when the museum mounted a series of exhibitions, including Alfred Stieglitz, 1983, Ansel Adams: Classic Images, 1985–1986, and On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: 150 Years of Photography, 1989. Carefully selected by O'Keeffe to include the finest examples, the Key Set traces the evolution of Stieglitz’s work from its inception in the 1880s to its rich maturation in the 1930s, and thoroughly documents all aspects of his decisive contribution to the art of photography.Īmong more than 1,640 platinum, palladium, carbon, photogravure, and gelatin silver prints is an extraordinary group of over 300 of Stieglitz’s evocative studies of clouds, called Equivalents, made from 1922 to 1937, and over 170 portraits of his friends and colleagues throughout his career. It remains one of the most important photographic collections in existence. The Gallery’s Stieglitz Collection, known as the Key Set, is an unparalleled selection of his photographs, containing at least one print of every mounted photograph in Stieglitz's possession at the time of his death. In 1949 Georgia O'Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Estate donated 1,311 photographs by Stieglitz and placed on deposit an additional collection of 331 portraits of O’Keeffe, which were later given to the Gallery in 1980. The Gallery, she wrote to a friend a few days later, "as you probably know, hasn't a speck of dust anywhere." More significantly, though, she realized that "Stieglitz worked for the recognition of photography as a fine art-the National Gallery means something in relation to that." The museum, she concluded, "seems like a peak-something finished-standing alone." With that auspicious visit, the National Gallery inaugurated its collection of photographs. With keen observation and astute judgment, she noted small details as well as the larger symbolic importance of the newly opened museum. The artist was deciding where to place the largest and most important collection of photographs by her late husband, Alfred Stieglitz, the seminal American photographer. The National Gallery of Art began actively to collect photographs in 1990, but the origins of the collection lay in a visit made to the Gallery in December 1948 by Georgia O'Keeffe.
Alfred Stieglitz’s “Key Set” and the Origins of the Gallery’s Collection
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