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Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection at the Met

Cindy Sherman - Untitled Film Still #48

Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954). Untitled Film Still #48, 1979. Gelatin silver print, 6 15/16 × 9 3/8 in. (17.6 × 23.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised gift of Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

‘Photography’s Last Century’ at the Met The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the exhibition ‘Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection’. March 10 to June 28, 2020]]>

Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

”Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection” celebrates the remarkable ascendancy of photography in the last hundred years through the magnificent promised gift to The Met of more than 60 extraordinary photographs from Museum Trustee Ann Tenenbaum and her husband, Thomas H. Lee, in honor of the Museum’s 150th anniversary in 2020. The exhibition features masterpieces by a wide range of the medium’s greatest practitioners, including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Ilse Bing, Joseph Cornell, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Andreas Gursky, Helen Levitt, Dora Maar, László Moholy-Nagy, Jack Pierson, Sigmar Polke, Man Ray, Laurie Simmons, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Edward Weston, and Rachel Whiteread.

The Tenenbaum Collection is particularly notable for its focus on artists’ beginnings, for a sustained interest in the nude, and for the breadth and depth of works by women artists. Paul Strand’s 1916 view from the viaduct confirms his break with the Pictorialist past and establishes the artist’s way forward as a cutting-edge modernist; Walker Evans’s shadow self-portraits from 1927 mark the first inkling of a young writer’s commitment to visual culture; and Cindy Sherman’s intimate nine-part portrait series from 1976 predates her renowned series of “film stills” and confirms her striking ambition and stunning mastery of the medium at the age of 22.

Ms. Tenenbaum commented, “Photographs are mirrors and windows not only onto the world but also into deeply personal experience. Tom and I are proud to support the Museum’s Department of Photographs and thrilled to be able to share our collection with the public.”

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Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection at the Met