PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ON VIEW AT THE MUSEU DE ARTE MODERNA DE SAO PAULO AND THE CENTRO CULTURAL BANCO DO BRASIL
Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil
March 25-May 16, 1999
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
June 2-July 25, 1999
An exhibition of photographs organized by John Szarkowski, Director Emeritus of The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Photography, opens on March 25 at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil, and travels to the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil to open on June 2. Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York includes highlights from MoMA's vast photography collection, many of which are considered masterworks of photographic history. A total of 125 artists are featured in the exhibition, each represented by one photograph.
The exhibition is based on Mr. Szarkowski's 1973 book, also entitled Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, which is being reissued on the occasion of this tour. An examination of more than forty years of collecting at MoMA, this book is a landmark in writing on photography, and one that has shaped current thinking on the medium. In addition to the one hundred works reproduced in the book, twenty-five photographs made during the past thirty years are also included in the exhibition. By examining a broadly inclusive selection of works--by artists such as Eugne Atget, Tina Barney, Imogen Cunningham, Walker Evans, Timothy O'Sullivan, Alfred Steiglitz, and Cindy Sherman--the exhibition shows photography from an exploratory rather than a purely historical perspective.
In the book Looking at Photographs, Mr. Szarkowski notes that even as late as the 1970s photography had received little serious study as an artistic medium and had seldom been collected by major art institutions. The Museum of Modern Art, however, has served as a notable exception. Since the establishment of its Department of Photography in 1940, the Museum has collected more than 25,000 photographs, resulting in one of the most important collections of photography in the world. By carefully selecting works from MoMA's collection for this book and exhibition, Mr. Szarkowski gives a sense of photography's traditions and possibilities, and suggests some of the ways in which the study of photography touches the broader issues of modern art.
In 1991, John Szarkowski was named Director Emeritus, Department of Photography, in recognition of three decades of accomplishments as head of that department. Under Mr. Szarkowski's direction, beginning in 1962, the Department of Photography presented more than one hundred exhibitions at the Museum, including Garry Winogrand (1988), Irving Penn (1984), and the four-part The Work of Atget (1981-85). Mr. Szarkowski has also written a number of influential books on the medium, including those published in conjunction with the above-mentioned exhibitions. Mr. Szarkowski was succeeded as the department's Chief Curator by Peter Galassi in 1991.
This exhibition is traveling under the auspices of The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
