: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Howard Gilman Foundation
recently announced that the museum has acquired the Gilman Paper
Company Collection, widely regarded as the world's finest
collection of photographs in private hands.
With exceptional examples of Nineteenth Century French, British
and American photographs, as well as masterpieces from the
turn-of-the-century and modernist periods, the Gilman collection
has played a central role in establishing photography's
historical canon and has long set the standard for
connoisseurship in the field. In addition to many unique and
beautiful icons of photography by such masters as Julia Margaret
Cameron, Roger Fenton, Nadar, Gustave Le Gray, Mathew Brady,
Carleton Watkins, Edward Steichen and Man Ray, the Gilman
collection includes extensive bodies of work by numerous pioneers
of the camera.
The collection was acquired through purchase, complemented by a
gift from the foundation. It contains more than 8,500
photographs, dating primarily from the first century of the
medium, 1839-1939.
The Gilman Paper Company Collection was formed over the course of
two decades (roughly 1977-1997) by Howard Gilman, chairman of the
Gilman Paper Company until his death in January 1998, and his
curator Pierre Apraxine. Although they began by collecting
photographs made during the first half of the Twentieth Century,
after several years they turned to the relatively unexplored
terrain of the Nineteenth Century.
In the ensuing years, Mr Gilman and Mr Apraxine built a
world-renowned collection that includes not only recognized and
celebrated monuments in the history of photography, but also
newly discovered artists and individual photographs that quickly
assumed iconic status in their own right. The beautiful and
mysterious "Woman Seen from the Back," circa 1862, by the
little-known French photographer Onésipe Aguado is one such
example; reproduced on the cover of the Metropolitan's 1993
exhibition catalog, The Waking Dream, the photograph is
now recognized as among the most elegant and enigmatic portraits
of its time.
Other Nineteenth Century French photographs - an area of
particular strength in the Gilman collection - include early
daguerreotypes such as Choiselat and Ratel's dazzling "Pavillon
de Flore and the Tuileries Gardens," 1849; portraits by the famed
Nadar and his brother Adrien Tournachon, whose "Self Portrait,"
circa 1855, reveals a sensitive and curiously sly artist in a
sketching hat and smock; 21 photographs by Gustave Le Gray,
including dramatic seascapes and dappled forest scenes; and
extensive explorations of Egypt and the Holy Land by Maxime du
Camp, Félix Teynard, Auguste Salzmann and Louis de Clercq.
Among the exceptional examples of Nineteenth Century English
photography are early, experimental photographs by the medium's
inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot ("Botanical Specimen," 1835?);
rare masterworks of landscape, architectural, still life,
portrait and documentary photography by Roger Fenton; portraits
by Julia Margaret Cameron, including "Philip Stanhope Worsley,"
1864-66, a mesmerizing portrait of the poet that suggests both
his intellectual intensity and his impending death from
tuberculosis; fine examples of Lewis Carroll's photographs of
children, most notably his portrait of the girl made famous by
his Alice stories, Alice Liddell as "The Beggar Maid," circa
1859.
Slavery, the abolitionist movement and the Civil War are
represented in a deep and nuanced way in the American photographs
of the Gilman collection. Among the works centered on this theme
are a rare and particularly sensitive portrait showing the
51-year-old Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Ill., soon after he
received his first nomination for the presidency.
Turn-of-the-century works of particular note in the Gilman
collection include Edward Steichen's large and painterly
composite photograph "Rodin - The Thinker," 1902, a print that
the artist referred to as "mon chef d'oeuvre, mon enfant"; George
Seeley's highly abstract "Winter Landscape," 1909; and nearly 50
prints by Eugene Atget. The fertile period of visual
experimentation between the two world wars is represented by
three unique exhibition prints from Paul Strand's most creative
moment, circa 1916; ten works by Man Ray; the sole known print of
Charles Sheeler's "Upper Deck," circa 1928; more than two dozen
photographs by Walker Evans; and major works by Alexander
Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, August Sander, Henri
Cartier-Bresson and others.
In announcing the acquisition, Philippe de Montebello, director
of the Metropolitan, noted that during the 1990s, Mr Gilman and
Mr Apraxine had worked in unison with Maria Morris Hambourg, then
curator in charge of the Metropolitan's department of
photographs, to shape the Gilman Paper Company Collection as a
perfect complement to that of the museum. Under Ms Hambourg's
direction, the museum presented a selection of more than 250
masterpieces from the Gilman collection in 1993 in the exhibition
"The Waking Dream."
Photographs from the Gilman collection have been included in
nearly every Metropolitan Museum photography exhibition and
installation since.
The museum announced that a changing selection of masterpieces
from the Gilman collection will be on view in the museum's Robert
Wood Johnson Jr Gallery beginning April 17, and continuing for
the next year. In addition, selected works from the Gilman
collection will be on view in two special exhibitions already
scheduled to appear at the Metropolitan later this year: "All the
Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852-1860" in the
Robert Lehman Wing, May 24 through August 21; and "The Perfect
Medium: Photography and the Occult" in the Harriette and Noel
Levine Gallery and The Howard Gilman Gallery, September 27
through December 31.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd
Street. For information, www.metmuseum.org or 212-535-7710.
