Since its foundation in 1929 MoMA has consis-
tently led the way in the display and collection of
photographs. Initially these photographs were
included in traveling exhibitions or exhibitions of
other art forms—most notably architecture. With
the formal creation of a Department of Photogra-
phy, in 1940, the Museum consolidated its presence
as the leading champion of photography as a form
of art rather than as primarily a scientific, market-
ing, or educational tool. Since then the Museum has
expanded the art of photography to incorporate
those other, more functional, aspects of the form.
The following account of the Museum’s involve-
ment with photography is in two sections. The first
section provides a historical overview of photography
at MoMA. This includes a brief account of the rela-
tionship to photography of the founders and early
officers of the Museum, as well as a description of
MoMA before there was an official Department of
Photography, followed by an account of the trends
and key exhibitions under each of the four heads of
the Department. The second, shorter section will deal
with the effect that photography had on MoMA and
the influence that MoMA exerted upon photography
during the course of the twentieth century.
Before MoMA
The history of photography at MoMA does not start
ex nihilowith the foundation of the Museum but
rather, as with the other departments of that now
august institution, it begins with a scattered interest
that predated the Museum and which existed inde-
pendently of the Museum in its early years. The most
important forum for photography was the Photo
Secession group (1902–1917) which included,
among others, the work and participation of Edward
Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz. In the United States
early aesthetic guidelines for the newly-possible art of
photography grew up around a number of galleries
in New York that displayed and sold photographs
and around the Photo-Secession group which, along
with its journal—Camera Work,promotedtheidea
of photography as art and inspired a generation of
photographers and photography collectors.
MoMA before the Department of Photography
From its inception the MoMA was open to new
ideas. One of the major reasons that its wealthy
founders brought it into being was to supersede the
stuffiness and institutional inertia of the existing
galleries and museums. Likewise, the reason that
they brought Alfred H. Barr to direct it was his
fearless exuberance about the ‘‘new.’’ Barr was the
Director and guiding light for the first few decades
of MoMA. Originally recommended to the foun-
ders by Paul J. Sachs of the Fogg Museum at
Harvard, Barr—an art history professor at Well-
esley—came to MoMA as a young man and was
largely responsible for museum staff appointments
and artistic direction.
Shortly before he arrived at the Museum, in
1929, Barr had been to Europe and the new art he
had seen during his travels was the European
avant-garde—a movement which had many photo-
grapher practitioners (most notably expatriate
American Man Ray). In his course on modern art
at Wellesley, Barr included not only photography
but architecture and machine-made products,
which provided an indication of his views on the
possibilities of art and of the direction he intended
for MoMA. Indeed, in a comment in the Museum’s
inauguralBulletincelebrating the Museum’s open-
ing in 1929 Barr noted that the Museum would
probably expand in time to include departments
such as film and photography.
Barr drew, and periodically updated, a genealogi-
cal flow chart of modern art, placing a version on the
cover of his 1936 bookCubism and Abstract Art
from the exhibition of the same name. This highly
influential chart gave ample scope for entirely new
genres or, in the case of photography, for the col-
lation of a series of existing practices into a single
genre. Despite, or because of, this openness the
Museum’s first acquisition of a photograph—Lehm-
bruck: Head of a Manby Walker Evans (given by
Lincoln Kirstein in 1930)—was not a deliberate
departure from previous types of museum acquisi-
tion but a pragmatic move to accept a donation. It
was only the 23rd work of art that MoMA had
acquired. In 1931, with the death of Lillie P. Bliss
(one of the Museum’s founders), the fledgling
Museum acquired a substantial art collection includ-
ing several photographs. Although it was not until
the founding of the Department that it was actively
enlarged, the photograph collection had now prop-
erly begun.
The Museum began in rented space in the
Heckscher Building (on Fifth Avenue and 57th
Street) but quickly moved around the corner to
bigger premises on 53rd street owned (and later
donated) by the Rockefellers. The first two exhibi-
tions at the new location of the Museum on 53rd
Street relied upon photography. The first—Modern
Architecture: International Exhibition in 1932—
coined the name of the pre-eminent architectural
style of the next 30 years and relied for its argument
on 75 or more large photographs illustrating the
new building and design practices coming out ofMUSEUM OF MODERN ART OF NEW YORK, THE