Beaumont Newhall's ‘Photography 1839–1937’ Making History

Abstract

On 17 March 1937, the exhibition ‘Photography 1839– 1937’ opened at the Museum of Modem Art. Warmly received, it travelled the United States.1 However, few of the critics who reviewed it or the viewers who enjoyed it imagined that it and the catalogue it spawned would define the history of the medium for the rest of the century. Beaumont Newhall, the MOMA librarian who was tapped as the show's curator (figure 1), was immediately defined as a major figure in the historiography of photography and his career as such was launched. His conception of how one evaluated the medium and his selection of early twentiethcentury as well as historic ‘masters’ of photography established a canon for the English-speaking world that every subsequent historian has had to either assimilate or challenge.

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