Camera Work And The Alfred Stieglitz Collection At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Abstract

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) holds a significant portion of the personal art collection of Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), photographer, publisher, gallery dealer and champion of photography. The Department of Photographic is home to 733 photographic objects by Stieglitz and artists whose work he collected, and 349 publications from Stieglitz's library, including his personal set of Camera Work, a journal he conceived published, and edited from 1903 to 1917. This thesis is an applied project that focuses on cataloguing Camera Work in The Museum System (TMS), the MMA's collection database system. The 191 prints and photographs in the Stieglitz Collection, which are associated with reproductions in the journal, are cross-referenced within the newly created bibliographic records. The thesis provides background information on Stieglitz, his collection at the MMA and Camera Work, along with detailed description of the project, cataloguing methodology, and an illustrated appendix listing and illustrating each of the 191 collection objects with their respective issues and reproduction methods.