Exhibition as Archive: Beaumont Newhall, Photography 1839–1937, and the Museum of Modern Art

Abstract

Critics have regarded Beaumont Newhall's tenure as the MoMA's curator of photography in the late 1930s as the first manifestation in the Photography Department of a larger problem at the MoMA as a whole: the attempt to define by fiat a ‘modernist aesthetic’ in photography as it had in the other arts. Newhall's first large-scale exhibition, however, belies this interpretation. Photography: 1839–1937, used a wide range of images and innovative display strategies to illustrate the entire domain of photography (X-rays to movie stills) rather than define or promote a high art separate from the popular origins of the medium. This inclusiveness, I argue, was based on the theories of Alois Riegl, a late nineteenth century art theorist who eschewed value distinctions between so-called high and low art. By applying Riegl's theories to this seminal exhibition, Newhall re-defined the role of the modern curator to that of an archivist: one who gathers, but leaves the creation of meaning to the viewer.