considered an acceptable form of art investment had
MoMA not constantly presented it as the equal of
painting and sculpture in exhibition after exhibition
and, by forming a Department in 1940, given it
institutional parity with them.
The nature of the unit of photographic art was
also largely determined by MoMA. Walter Benja-
min’s famous essay ‘‘The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction,’’ which demystified the
‘‘aura’’ of art, was published in 1936, the same year
as Beaumont Newhall put together his exhibition
on the history of photography. This latter could
easily have been influenced by the same arguments
that swayed Benjamin against fetishizing the object
of art itself. Photographers work with a combina-
tion of cameras, film, and paper to make photo-
graphs. Depending on the exact process, rendering
prints from a stored image is usually, at least the-
oretically, reproducible. As such it would make
sense for the negative, or the copyright of the
image to be the accepted unit of exchange for
photographic art. However, the Museum’s insis-
tence on buying, collecting, and exhibiting photo-
graphic prints—in exactly the same way as
paintings or sculptures were bought, collected,
and exhibited—meant that the print had become
the accepted commodity in photographic art by the
end of the twentieth century.
Despite these numerous and far-reaching inter-
ventions in the history of photography, perhaps
the most enduring impact that MoMA has had on
photography has been on the scope of the art
form. By forming a Department of Photography
the Museum made it clear that it thought of
photography as more than simply a technique
(there is no Department of Pointillism, for exam-
ple). Photography nowadays is used in marketing,
education, science, industry, and history; its prod-
ucts are found on any imaginable surface cons-
tituting, inter alia, artworks, documents, and
evidence; it is used for business, pleasure, sport,
and religion. Over the twentieth century, and espe-
cially under the stewardship of John Szarkowski,
MoMA has opened the possibility that any print
produced by anyone, for any reason, might have
enough aesthetic significance to merit its treatment
as art.
DanielFriedmanSeealso:Abbott, Berenice; Adams, Ansel; Arbus,
Diane; Atget, Euge`ne; Brandt, Bill; Brassaı ̈; Calla-
han, Harry; Cartier-Bresson, Henri; Davidson,
Bruce; diLorca Corcia, Philip; Evans, Walker;
Frank, Robert; Gursky, Andreas; Kerte ́sz, Andre ́;
Kruger, Barbara; Lange, Dorothea; Levy, Julien;
Liebling, Jerome; Man Ray; Michals, Duane; New-
hall, Beaumont; Photo-Secession; Rauschenberg,
Robert; Sander, August; Siskind, Aaron; Steichen,
Edward; Stieglitz, Alfred; Szarkowski, John; Wes-
ton, Edward; White, Clarence; White, Minor; Wino-
grand, GarryFurther Reading
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Als, Hilton, and John Szarkoswki. ‘‘Looking at Pictures.’’
Grand Street59 (January 1997): 102–121.
Galassi, Peter.American Photography, 1890–1965, from the
Museum of Modern Art, New York. New York: Harry N.
Abrams in association with The Museum of Modern
Art, 1995.
Galassi, Peter.Philip-Lorca diCorcia. New York: Museum
of Modern Art, 1995.
Galassi, Peter, Robert Storr and Anne Umland.Making
Choices: 1929, 1939, 1948, 1955. New York: The Mu-
seum of Modern Art, 2000.
Levin, Michael D.The Modern Museum: Temple or Show-
room. Jerusalem: Dvir Publishing House, 1983.
Lynes, Russell.Good Old Modern: An Intimate Portrait of
the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Atheneum, 1973.
Newhall, Beaumont. A History of Photography from 1839 to
the Present Day. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1949.
Philips, Christopher. ‘‘The Judgment Seat of Photogra-
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Staniszewski, Mary Anne.The Power of Display: A History
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Szarkowski, John.The Photographer’s Eye. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1966.MUSEUM OF MODERN ART OF NEW YORK, THE