the book has gone through five editions. His message
was clear: that photography is a fine art on par with
all other arts, painting, sculpture, prints, architec-
ture, and film.
Newhall was instrumental in the creation and
development of the department of photography at
the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He contin-
ued on to a distinguished and innovative career as
curator and director of the George Eastman House
in Rochester, New York, and later as teacher at the
University of New Mexico creating a foundation
that set standards for photographic scholarship.
He enthusiastically shared his knowledge and
insight with students, scholars, colleagues, and peo-
ple around the world, setting an inspirational
example. He encouraged many of his students to
pursue careers in photography and then generously
helped launch those careers. Many became histor-
ians and curators who have ensured photography’s
remarkable stature and popularity.
Newhall’s philosophy is best summed up in his
own words
History is research, and history is interpretation, and
history is presentation—in that order. Research is the
easiest to learn and the most fun. The interpretation
becomes difficult and the presentation requires a real
stage-setting and careful structuring—even the shortest
piece I do is structured.
Beaumont Newhall was born in Lynn, Massachu-
setts in 1908. When he was 15, he taught himself film
processing in his mother’s darkroom, where she
made portraits of family and friends. He dreamed
of going to Hollywood and becoming a film director
but attended Harvard University to study art his-
tory, graduating in 1930. A year later he obtained a
master’s degree, having participated in Paul Sachs’s
famous museum studies course, which appealed to
Beaumont for its ‘‘hands on’’ approach.
In 1936, Newhall was offered a job as librarian at
the new MoMA by director Alfred Barr, also a pro-
duct of Sachs’s Harvard class. Shortly thereafter,
Newhall was allowed $5,000 to mount the first exhibi-
tion of the history of photography. The result was one
of the most ambitious and wide ranging photography
exhibitions ever assembled. Opening spring 1937,
Newhall’s landmark surveyPhotography 1839–1937
presented 841 items, including cameras, apparatus,
and negatives alongside photographs that summar-
ized the medium’s first 100 years. Beaumont’s keen
understanding of the technical specifications, not only
of each camera but each photographic process,
allowed a richer understanding of the photographer’s
intentions as well as the image itself, bridging the
science and art of photography. This exhibition was
also the genesis of Newhall’s history; the show’s hand-
some, fully documented catalogue was to far outstrip
the show in significance and influence. Lewis Mum-
ford in his review inThe New Yorker,notedthat
Newhall ‘‘did an admirable job in ransacking the
important collection for historic examples; his catalo-
gue, too, is a very comprehensive and able piece of
exposition—one of the best critical histories I know in
any language.’’
The show circulated to 10 American museums
from coast to coast. Among the contemporary
photographers represented—today’s twentieth cen-
tury masters—were Ansel Adams, Paul Strand,
Edward Weston, and Margaret Bourke-White. An
expanded version of Newhall’s catalogue essay was
published in book form by the museum the follow-
ing year asPhotography: A Short Critical History.
It was widely translated and regarded as the classic
history of photography.
The Museum of Modern Art was effectively the
only museum in America that regularly exhibited
photography in the 1930’s. As a result of his posi-
tion, Newhall became friendly with many of the
most important photographers of his time, including
Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Henri Cartier-
Bresson. Cartier-Bresson’s emotionally-charged work
especially appealed to Newhall as he was a fan of
the small-format camera and its ability to capture
the spontaneous.
Newhall was named MoMA’s first curator of
the newly established Department of Photography
in 1940 and eventually became its first director. Like
his MoMA colleague, architect Philip Johnson,
Newhall was a strong advocate of Modernism and
helped to define the movement as it emerged in the
United States and Europe. He had the gift of a great
collector-curator, which is to buy decisively and
with total assurance in his acquisitions. In order to
purchase works, Newhall had received the modest
sum of $1,000 from arts’ patron David H. McAlpin.
Newhall wrote in his memoirFocusthat heSpent half the money in the next few days. I went down
the street to the Delphic Studio galleries and bought the
entire one-person exhibition of some fifty photographs by
La ́szlo ́Moholy-Nagy for five hundred dollars. These were,
for the most part, made in the mid-1920s, while he was
teaching at the Bauhaus...That collection, plus the work I
later acquired for the George Eastman House, constitutes
the greatest collection of Moholy-Nagy in this country.In 1942, when Newhall served in the Army Air
Force during World War II, Nancy Newhall became
acting curator of MoMA’s photography department
and eventually organized over a dozen exhibitions
including the first major retrospective of Paul Strand.NEWHALL, BEAUMONT