Historic photographs and a sad bear: summer purchases by art museums

A review of the most interesting art acquisitions announced by museums in the first week of August 2022.

Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Nationalmuseum, Stockholm · Image: Chester Higgins Jr, “Early Morning Coffee, Harlem” 1974, gelatin silver print, image: 15.9 x 23.8 cm (6 1/4 x 9 3/8 in.), sheet: 20.3 x 25.3 cm (8 x 9 15/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington. Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund. 2022.21.4

On Thursday 4 August the National Gallery of Art, Washington announced two important acquisitions for its photography department. The first consists of eight works by four modern and contemporary African-American photographers: Adger Cowans (b.1936), Chester Higgins Jr. (b.1946), Herman Howard (1942-1980) and Herb Robinson (unknown). The Gallery explains that “encouraged by Gordon Parks (1912-2006) and Roy DeCarava (1919-2009), they represent an important achievement in the history of photography—they empowered themselves to represent their own Black communities during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s.”

The second acquisition is “Portrait of the Eternal“, 1935, a work by Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902-2002), one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography.  According to the National Gallery of Art, the photograph “depicts Isabel Villaseñor—a noted post-revolutionary Mexican sculptor, painter, printmaker, poet, and songwriter—looking into a mirror as she pulls her hair back from her partially lit face. Using sunlight, as the poet Langston Hughes wrote of Bravo’s work, that is ‘a quiet veil making the shadows like velvet,’ Bravo transformed an everyday event into a poetic reflection on beauty, vanity, and the transitory nature of life.”

Image: Carl Richard Söderström: “Dancing Bear”, 2021. Photo: Linn Ahlgren/Nationalmuseum.

Another major American museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, also announced on 4 August the acquisition of 87 photographic images from the book “Chizu / The Map“, published by Kawada Kikuji (b. 1933) on 6 August 1965, on the 20th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima. The Boston MFA explains that “the photographs in ‘Chizu / The Map’ explore not only the residual physical traces, but also the persistence of psychological effects. (…) Through a mastery of metaphor, Kawada’s photographs raise questions not only about the identity and role of Japan through the course of World War II and afterward, but also the pervasive cultural disruption that was caused by the American Occupation of Japan. The images are eerily apocalyptic in tone and effect, asking viewers to contemplate the toll of nuclear war”.

Meanwhile, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm announced on Wednesday 3 August the acquisition of “Dancing Bear“, a sculpture by Carl Richard Söderström. According to the museum, the process of creating the sculpture “resulted in a variegated, rough, living surface. The final yellow glaze appears to have been poured over the bear as if someone had emptied a can of yellow paint over it – a colour alien to its natural element, which exacerbates its gloomy expression. According to Söderström, the title Dancing Bear refers to circus bears: animals held captive and trained to perform acts that do not come naturally to them in order to entertain an audience. This is why the bear is so unhappy.”