genheim Museum’sMoving Pictures, which sur-
veyed video, film, and photography of the past
four decades. While Strangers remained largely
focused on the over-arching theme of the Other as
encountered in what they termed photographic
media, the Guggenheim proposed specific affinities
between the media in the exhibit: all are essentially
photo-based, reproducible, and omnipresent in
mass culture forms such as television, advertising,
cinema, and journalism.
The continued consideration of the boundaries of
photography has also prompted new attention on
those photographs that had increasingly been mar-
ginalized in mainstream museum collection and exhi-
bition practices. While this trend has now been
reversed to a certain extent with recent acquisitions
by the Met and others of vernacular photographs,
alternative collections that have developed outside
museums provide some clues about what museums
had previously disavowed, overlooked, or omitted
from their purview. Two serviceable examples of
such alternative collections are the Burns Collection
and the Kinsey Institute’s collection. Burns Collec-
tion is home to more than 700,000 photographs
including some 60,000 examples of early medical
photography ranging from the 1860s to 1920. Addi-
tionally, the collection is home to images of what
might be considered the darker side of life and, there-
fore, of photography’s subjects—crime, death, disas-
ter, disease, murder, racism, riots, and war. The
Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and
Reproduction was established in 1947 by Dr. Alfred
C. Kinsey, the pioneer in the research of human
sexual behavior and author of the infamous ‘‘Kinsey
Reports.’’ His photographic collection was an intri-
cate part of his data collection on the topic, begun in
- Arranged categorically by position or act, these
nearly 96,000 photographs from the United States,
Europe, and Asia include work by such photogra-
phers as Judy Dater, George Platt Lynes (the second
largest holding of his work worldwide), Irving Penn,
and Joel-Peter Witkin.
Increasingly, museums must operate as businesses
inordertomakeendsmeet.Inthecaseofacquisition
and exhibition policies, this outlook has led to corpo-
rate underwriting as attested to by the many exhibi-
tion catalogue forewords that are penned by company
CEOs and Chairs of the Board. Such funding oppor-
tunities have no doubt assisted museums in a time of
ever-diminishing government support, but they have
also called into question the viability of curatorial
freedom. Of course, curators have long relied on the
fostering and maintaining of relationships with collec-
tors (be they individual or corporate), dealers, and
artists, making it possible to wonder if there ever
was complete curatorial independence. Nevertheless,
following the so-called culture wars of the 1990s,
some have argued that museums are no longer willing
to absorb the risks implicit in mounting exhibitions of
photographers or subject matter that could be
taken—or mistaken—as questionable. As the exam-
ples of Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, and
Andres Serrano, one person’s support of provocative
artwork was another person’s source of indignation.
Despite and perhaps in spite of such institutional
setbacks, public interest in photography remains see-
mingly insatiable. Any doubt about this was rent
asunder by the role photography played—both out-
side of and within museums—in the wake of Septem-
ber 11, 2001. In two small storefronts in Soho, New
York, and just over a mile from the site of the atro-
city, thousands of photographs hung from floor to
ceiling. Bystanders, residents of New York, and those
with a photographic reaction to the events they
wanted to share—many of them amateurs without
any particular aesthetic or photographic training—in
addition to professional photographers contributed
their photographs of the events of that day and its
aftermath to the display.here is new york: a democ-
racy of photographs, as the exhibition was titled, was
as remarkable for the overwhelming number of sub-
missions and attendant sales of the images to raise
money for victims’ children as it was for the astound-
ing numbers who visited this unofficial quasi-museum
(more than 100,000 within the first two months). This
photographic catharsis of sorts might seem singular or
location-specific, yet the museological reaction to Sep-
tember 11 confirmed just the opposite. Across the
country, but especially in New York of course,
museums installed exhibitions within months of the
tragedy. From MoMA’s collection-generatedLife of
the City(which included a small-scale installation of
here is new york) to the New York Historical Society’s
presentation New York September 11 by Magnum
Photographers, from the Met’s display of historical
photographs of the city, entitled New York, New
York, to the nationally touringSeptember 11: Bearing
Witness to Historyfrom the Smithsonian, museums
emerged as spaces for the contemplation and compre-
hension of the events, a role confirmed by public
attendance. Notably, the overwhelming majority of
such exhibitions were comprised entirely of photo-
graphs. This unity of institutional response suggests
that in a time of ever-changing media technologies,
photography’s lure remains as potent as ever.Museums and their Collections
Below is a list of selected U.S. museums and a
summary account of their history, the size of theirMUSEUMS: UNITED STATES