Beaumont Newhall

Beaumont Newhall (1908–1993) was an art historian, writer, photographer and the first curator of photography at Museum of Modern Art, New York. His The History of Photography (1939) remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photo history textbook. He studied art history and museum studies at Harvard University (1930). Newhall mounted a survey exhibition of photography for the Museum in 1937, Photography, 1839-1937. The 800-work exhibition toured the country and the catalog for the show became a staple for the history of photography. Ironically, Newhall's treatment of photography as high art rankled the museum's board of trustees, who accepted public criticism that the Museum was turning a popular medium into an avenue of snobbery. [1]

Literature

By Newhall

• The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present Day, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1949, 256 pp; 5th ed., 1982.
• A Short Critical History of Photography, 1940.
• Latent Image: The Discovery of Photography, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967.
• Airborne Camera: The World from the Air and Outer Space, NY: Hastings House Publishers, 1969.
• The Daguerreotype in America, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1976
• Photography, Essays & Images: Illustrated Readings in the History of Photography, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980
• Focus: Memoirs of a Life in Photography, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993

On Newhall

• "The Challenge of Photography to This Art Historian". in Perspectives on Photography: Essays in Honor of Beumont Newhall, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986:1-9.
• Marquis, Alice Goldfarb, Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern, Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989:137-138.
• Ya'ara Gil Glazer, "A new kind of history? The challenges of contemporary histories of photography", Journal of Art Historiography, no. 3, December 2010 [2].

External links

• Newhall at Wikipedia
• Newhall in the Dictionary of Art Historians