New on View: Photography at Princeton

In the interviews that led up to my appointment as the Art Museum’s new Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography in 2013, I heard early and often about the desire to see the history of photography told on the Museum’s walls. With this in mind, I proposed a series of installations—each one necessarily and happily different from the one that would precede or follow it—designed specifically to serve the Museum’s educational ambitions while capitalizing on one of the collection’s greatest abilities: the capacity to tell an effective and nuanced history of photography, from its very beginnings in the early nineteenth century to contemporary efforts. The breadth and depth of our collection can delight and surprise every time.

Although the first photograph did not enter the Museum’s collection until 1949, when former director Frank Jewett Mather donated an Alfred Stieglitz print, photographs have been exhibited in McCormick Hall since 1929—making this museum one of the earliest to consider photography a fine art medium. These early exhibitions, which continued regularly until World War II, focused on architectural, archeological, sculpture, and portrait photography. Annual group exhibitions featured leading artists of the era such as Berenice Abbott, Anton Bruehl, George Platt Lynes, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Charles Sheeler.

Through the generosity of David Hunter McAlpin, Class of 1920, a far more expansive presence for photography at the Museum was formalized in 1971. McAlpin gifted more than five hundred photographs (including John Thompson’s A Convict’s Home), established an acquisitions fund, and in the subsequent year funded a professorship in the Department of Art and Archaeology dedicated to the history of photography. Peter C. Bunnell (see right), already named curator of photography in 1971, was appointed as the first McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art. Both the McAlpin gift and the professorship signaled Princeton University’s early commitment to photography as a field of study, something rare among both museums and art history programs at the time. As John Szarkowski, the renowned curator at the Museum of Modern Art, noted in the press release accompanying this appointment: “When Mr. Bunnell’s program is developed it will offer the opportunity to study the history of photography in the context of a coherent and rigorous curriculum of art historical scholarship. This will constitute an advance of major importance to the study not only of photography, but of all the visual arts of the modern era.”

McAlpin’s interest in photography had been piqued by his friendship with Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, and his 1971 gift to the Museum included works by other major artists of the era such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. The Museum continued to build its collection, developing particular strengths in Pictorialist photography from the 1880s to the 1910s from both the United States and Europe and in Japanese photography from the second half of the twentieth century, as reflected by Shōmei Tōmatsu’s Untitled. The Museum also established major archives for the work of pivotal photography teachers, including Ruth Bernhard, Clarence H. White, and Minor White. With approximately 27,000 objects, today’s photography holdings range from the early 1840s to the present and include works created by more than 900 artists from around the world. The current installation launches what will become an ongoing investigation into the richness of our holdings and of the evolving meanings of photography itself.

These installations relate to another key aspect of the Museum’s educational mission: its commitment to shaping the next generation of museum professionals through a robust internship program. An endowment established by the estate of the prominent art collector and philanthropist Joseph F. McCrindle will support an undergraduate intern who will work alongside me as I get to know Princeton’s photography holdings. Together, we will shape each successive look at the history of photography, from the creation of a preliminary checklist to the research and writing of didactic texts to the final presentation of works in the galleries. Meghan Angelos (right), Class of 2014, gamely devoted herself to the inaugural effort. A student in Princeton’s Department of Art and Archaeology who is also pursuing certificates in Dance and French, Angelos arrived at the Museum having completed a history of photography course her sophomore year as well as an internship at the Art Institute in her hometown of Chicago, bringing to us extensive research experience and a great sense of organization. Angelos’s interest in photography extends to her undergraduate thesis, for which she recently visited the J. Paul Getty Museum to see relevant photographs in that collection. The ability to connect students’ academic interests with hands-on experience—Angelos was back from exams in time to assist with the final display of the objects she and I had carefully selected over the previous months—is one of the most important aspects of the Museum’s program. Angelos has realized through her internship that she would like to pursue curatorial work. To my mind, there can be no higher tribute to the educational mission of the Museum or the power of its collection.

Katherine A. Bussard

Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography