Under her curatorship, then little-known photogra-
phers Helen Levitt, Eliot Porter, W. Eugene Smith,
Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, and Weegee re-
ceived their first serious attention and scholarship.
In 1947, Newhall was awarded a Guggenheim
Foundation fellowship to rework his book, and the
new version was published in 1949 by MoMA under
the titleThe History of Photography, 1839 to the
Present. He continued to revise and expand his
study over the next 35 years, with the last revision
in 1982.
In 1948, Newhall was appointed the first curator
of the newly established George Eastman House in
Rochester, New York, where he served for 10 years
before becoming the museum’s director until his
retirement in 1971. At Eastman House, Nancy
Newhall worked on exhibitions, and with her hus-
band, advised the collection of Exchange National
Bank of Chicago, the first collection of photo-
graphs assembled for an American corporation.
Together they were founding members of the influ-
ential San Francisco-based organization Friends of
Photography for the promotion of photographic
education. After his retirement from Eastman
House, Newhall became a visiting professor of art
at the University of New Mexico, where he helped
to establish the first doctoral program in the his-
tory of photography at an American university.
Few have had a greater impact on interpreting
the history of fine art photography, but also on the
culture of photography than Beaumont Newhall.
Newhall died in 1993; Nancy had died in 1974,
struck by a tree while white-water rafting. The
Beaumont and Nancy Newhall papers are archived
at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Cali-
fornia, and are available at the Online Archive ofBeaumont Newhall, Charis Weston’s Typewriter.
[#1940, Beaumont Newhall,#2005, the Estate of Beaumont Newhall and Nancy Newhall.
Permission to reproduce courtesy of Scheinbaum and Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, New Mexico]
NEWHALL, BEAUMONT