Tags for: Icons of American Photography
  • Special Exhibition

New Orleans, Canal Street (detail), 1955. Robert Frank (American, 1924). Gelatin silver print; 32 x 47.8 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Anonymous gift 1984.214 © Robert Frank

Icons of American Photography

Sunday, June 24–Sunday, September 16, 2007

About The Exhibition

The photography collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art is a highly selective group of masterworks spanning the history of the medium. This exhibition gathered 116 iconic images from the museum's remarkable holdings of American photography from 1850 to 1960, illustrating the development of an art form and a nation in one exhibition.

Like the rest of the museum, Cleveland's photography collection is built on quality over quantity. From Daguerreotype portraits and massive glass-plate landscapes of the 1800s to spontaneous street shots from the mid 20th century, each photograph is a superlative creative achievement. Similarly, the more than 60 artists represented included every major American photographer, among them Ansel Adams, Margaret Bourke-White, Imogen Cunningham, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, Helen Levitt, Gordon Parks, Aaron Siskind, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Carleton Watkins, Weegee, and Edward Weston.

Icons of American Photography was organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art. This exhibition was made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius. The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this exhibition with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.