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Newly Acquired Street Photographs and Old Master Prints on View at The New York Public Library Recent Acquisitions On View from February 24 through June 24, 2006 Selected Works Include Seldom-Viewed Photos by Joel Meyerowitz, early work by Diane Arbus, classic images by Garry Winogrand, Dutch Etchings, and 18th-century French Color Prints The New York Public Library unveils recent additions to the Print Collection and Photography Collection of the Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, in the exhibition Recent Acquisitions: Old Master Prints and New York Street Photography from the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition is on view on the third floor at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street from February 24 through June 24, 2006. Admission is free. New York Street Photography from the 1960s and 1970s
Recent Acquisitions: New York Street Photography from the 1960s and 1970s highlights the work of six photographers. Ten classic works by well-known street photographer Garry Winogrand and sixteen photos from photographer Diane Arbus ' late-1950s Coney Island series mix with early work from Thomas Struth and Brooklyn-based photographer William Gedney. Roy Colmer 's series details doors in the East Village circa 1976, and seldom-viewed black and white photos from noted color photographer Joel Meyerowitz depict New York in the late 1960s and early 70s. In total, the exhibit consists of forty-seven, black and white photographs. Street photography refers to photographs made in public places. Similar to photojournalism, street photography is documentary by nature. Unlike photojournalism, the viewed moment does not necessarily have obvious significance; it is life itself. Street photography emerged in the early 20th century with French photographer Eugene Atget, and in the 1920s-40s with the work of well-known photographers André Kertesz and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Garry Winogrand, following in the footsteps of Robert Frank and William Klein, is one of the American innovators of the genre. "Street photography plays a critical role in the history of photography," says Stephen C. Pinson, Curator, Photography Collection, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, "and New York photographs will always be important to The New York Public Library's Photography Collection. This exhibition gives the Library the opportunity to show off its recent additions and is also the first in a planned series that will highlight the ongoing growth of the Library's collections of New York photographs from the second half of the 20th century." Recent Acquisitions demonstrates the wide range of visual imagery that comprises the genre of street photography. For example, Meyerowitz's Rockefeller Center, 1970, is a contemplative, humorous work juxtaposing an astronaut suit in a store window and a man leaning against a wall. Struth's late 1970s photos of Park Avenue and the United Nations Plaza anticipate his later photographs of crowds in museums and other public spaces. Diane Arbus' 35mm images of Coney Island beachgoers are more candid than her later medium-format pictures. Some of Winogrand's pieces have a photojournalistic leaning: one photo documents a labor union peace rally on lower Broadway, while another shows young men and women hanging out in Central Park. In contrast, Gedney's haunting portrayal of an old gas station sets a completely different mood. Very diverse, yet all within the broader definition of street photography, the artists' work demonstrates that street photographers are as concerned with imparting their own vision of the world as they are with describing the subjects they depict. Old Master Prints
In Recent Acquisitions: Old Master Prints, a selection of more than ninety prints celebrates acquisitions made over the past five years. From an anonymous, delicate late 15th-century Florentine engraving of The Crown of the Virgin to an amusing early 19th-century depiction of a lithography salesman by the French artist Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet, the exhibition encompasses more than three centuries of printmaking history while it traces an expanding repertoire of printmaking processes. Highlights of this exhibition include a major, rare mid-16th-century Italian print by the Master HFE and two monumental etchings by Giandomenico and Lorenzo Tiepolo after paintings by their father, Giambattista Tieopolo. Another member of the Tiepolo family, Francesco, is represented by a possibly unique etching of fireworks over the Castel Sant'Angelo exhibited alongside a second impression of this print, hand-colored by the French artist Louis-Jean Desprez. Other unusual prints include an elaborate allegory on the French Revolution by what appears to have been an amateur artist, and an imaginative early 19th-century view of Little Loreto, Kentucky, the home of the first order of nuns in America to provide a Catholic education. The prints in the exhibition both build on existing strengths and address gaps in the collection. The collection has been enriched with the acquisition of several major 18th-century French color prints, including Philibert-Louis Debucourt 's The Palais Royal Gallery's Walk and his masterpiece, The Public Promenade. Other significant additions include a pair of color prints by Jean-Francois Janinet and Jean-Baptiste Chapuy 's spectacular aquatints of The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1779 and The Eruption of Mount Etna in 1766.The acquisition of several Dutch etchings better traces the changing representation of the indigenous Netherlandish landscape, including a rare early 17th-century etching by Roelant Savery, slightly later suites of prints by the prolific etcher Jan van de Velde, and a pacific mid-century landscape by Simon de Vlieger. Work by two important German painter-lithographers, Johann Anton Ramboux and Ferdinand Olivier, round out the collection's selection of early lithographs. Other additions to the collection explore the relationship between artist and printmaking process: Giulio Bonasone in 16th-century Italy grasped the autographic and spontaneous nature of etching, and Roelant Savery in early 17th-century Holland, who passed that discovery on to other artists. The evolution of aquatint is now better documented through suites of prints by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince and the Abbé de Saint-Non. William Pether and Johann Jakob Haid brilliantly realized the drama inherent in mezzotint, represented until now primarily by a substantial survey of British late 17th- and 18th-century mezzotint portraits. The nucleus of the Library's collection of Old Master prints was formed in 1909 when the Library's first Curator of Prints, Frank Weitenkampf, assessed the collection and recognized the need to add master works to the already strong collection of modern prints. The Library then raised additional funds for the purchase of Old Master prints. Junius S. Morgan, J. Pierpont Morgan's nephew and advisor on art and rare books, then returned from a shopping expedition to Europe with approximately fifteen hundred German, Netherlandish, French, and Italian prints dating from the 15th to the 17th century, including the work of artists from Aldegrever to Rubens. Almost one hundred years later, the Library continues to make progress in this mission: to ensure that master prints are well-represented in the Print Collection. Although the Print Collection has grown exponentially since that day in 1909, Roberta Waddell, current Curator of Prints, the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, says Recent Acquisitions shows the continuous fine-tuning of the collection: "Not only do the prints on view strengthen the Library's Print Collection, the most accessible in New York City," states Waddell, "but each acquisition represents careful consideration of the print's quality and condition to fully capture the varieties of line, texture, and tone offered by various printmaking processes in the service of the artist's vision."Recent Acquisitions: Old Master Prints and New York Street Photography from the 1960s and 1970s are on view February 24 through June 24, 2006 in the Print Gallery and Stokes Gallery (both on the third floor) at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Exhibition hours are Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Saturday, May 27; Sunday, May 28; Mondays; Sundays after Memorial Day, and holidays. Admission is free. For more information, call 212-869-8089 or visit www.nypl.org. Recent Acquisitions: Old Master Prints and New York Street Photography from the 1960s and 1970s were made possible by the ongoing support of Miriam and Ira D. Wallach. ### Contact: Gayle Snible 212.704.8600 gs:02.24.06:nypl007
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