A Rare Gift: The Noel and Harriette Levine Collection of Photographs

The Noel and Harriette Levine Photography Collection, spanning over 170 years, is considered among the finest photography collections in private hands and is being presented in its first public display since it was gifted to the Museum in 2008.

Noel and Harriette Levine built their photography collection over the course of 30 years. Embracing a wide range of periods and styles, the collection features notable examples of vintage 19th-century photography, including iconic calotypes by the British practitioners Fox Talbot, David Octavius Hill, and Robert Adamson; images by American masters of early landscape photography, among them William H. Jackson and Carleton E. Watkins; and work by French masters such as Gustave Le Gray and Nadar. The collection also encompasses signature examples of Pictorialism by such important figures as Julia Margaret Cameron, Oscar Gustav Rejlander, Karl Struss, and Hans Watzek.

The Levines also hold an exemplary representation of early 20th-century works of American and international modernism by some if its greatest masters—Paul Outerbridge, Man Ray, Charles Sheeler, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston—and an extensive holding of images by André Kertész. The collection also includes key images by contemporary photographers, including David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, and William Wegman.

This exhibition includes works ranging from 19th-century British calotypes to modernist masterpieces and recent examples of contemporary work. The exhibition includes 117 notable images by André Kertész, David Octavius Hill, Paul Outerbridge, Man Ray, August Sander, and Cindy Sherman, among others.

The exhibition is curated by Nissan Perez, Horace and Grace Goldsmith Senior Curator of the Noel and Harriette Levine Department of Photography.