20/20: Twentieth Century Acquisitions by Twenty Leading Patrons

Fine Arts Museum, Museum of New Mexico

Left: Plaza, Looking North, Santa Fe, February, 1997; Right: Detail of Front Facade, Fine Arts Museum, Santa Fe, 1997, photos by John Hazeltine

Santa Fe, NM

505-476-5072

http://www.museumofnewmexico.org

20/20: Twentieth Century Acquisitions by Twenty Leading Patrons

February 4 - August 13, 2000

With the opening in 1917 of the Museum of Fine Arts, support came from many contributors of art who helped establish the permanent collection. In the late 20th century this collecting heritage began to include photographic work. The leading patrons represented in 20/20 continue to add even more to the rich diversity of New Mexico's history. (left: Sarah Charlesworth, Homage to Nature, 1995, Cibachrome photograph, Jane Reese Williams Collection, gift of Bobbie Foshay-Miller)

"20/20" represents a diverse cross section of donations from visionary benefactors such as Jane Reese Williams, Gil and Eileen Hitchcock and the late Eliot Porter. Works include La Poupée (The Doll) by pictorialist photographer Anne Brigman, a departure from her customary nudes photographed in wilderness settings. Minor White's Frosted Window, Rochester, New York, 1952 is both a creative, formal abstraction and an expressive mirror of the photographer's and the viewer's inner symbolism.

Other artists in the show include Alvin Langdon Coburn, the youngest member of Stieglitz's Photo-Secession and a member of its international counterpart, The Linked Ring; fashion photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe; documentary photographers Aleksandras Macijauskas, Adrienne Salinger, Miguel Gander and Jim Stone; and Sarah Charlesworth, a seminal figure in the ongoing investigation of the ways in which our modern consciousness is shaped by photography. Works by Laura Gilpin, Arthur Wesley Dow, Alfred Stieglitz, Alexander Rodchenko and Patrick Nagatani are also featured. (left: Varvara Rodchencko, Self Portrait, 1966. Photogram. Gift of the Rodchenko family)

(From left to right: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Cooling Tower, c. 1967. Gelatin silver photograph. Lucy Lippard Collection; Alexander Rodchenko, Finishing with Electric Lighting at Park Cultury, 1929. Vintage gelatin silver photograph. Gift of the Rodchencko Family; Minor White, Frosted Window, Rochester, NY, 1952. Gelatin silver photograph. Jordi M. Chilson Endowment, Museum purchase with Museum of New Mexico Foundation funds)

rev. 12/27/10

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