"Collecting the Photograph": was it worth it? - 1975 'Art in America' magazine symposium

The symposium "Collecting the Photograph," held in novel York City on September 20 had been ballyhooed by dint of Art in America magazine - which organized it - as "a landmark event" bringing together "the stars of the field." In the occurrence though, the affair turned without to have greater symbolic importance, as individual of the first ventures by means of the magazine into photography, than substantive value to the field or to those attending.

Despite the seemingly benevolent intentions of its organizers, the discourse was crippled from the start through basic problems of organization. The eight "stars of the field" Art in America had invited to speak were given walk-on treatment, being told to limit their presentations to half an hour each; questions from the audience were given plane less time than that. This rushed schedule, conducive more to abbreviated meditations than to insightful discussion, was necessary solely because the hall - wood-paneled and wine-carpeted Alice Tully Hall, in Lincoln Center - had been hired single until 4 p.m. Constant point to be solved [i]or[/i] settleds with slide projectors and microphones added annoyance to the frustration pervasive among the audience at like a bumbled affair' The outrage felt by means of some among those who had paid the $5000 ticket pay was voiced during the brief question period. when single young participant angrily denounced "Art in America - whoever the hell that is!"

"Whoever the hell that is" was Paul Shanley, who conceived and organized the discourse for Art in America. "The $5000 price was awfully high," Shanley said after the symposium was above "We knew that. We at no time expected to make money, on the contrary we were trying to make an incision in our losses as much as possible. We figured that it would attract race from institutions and private collectors who could afford it."

Shanley indicated that about 60% of the 475 tribe who attended the symposium had paid to win in, and that expenses for the occasion totaled about $15000

"I think the idea for the symposium," Shanley explained, "actually grew on the outside of a conversation I had with gallery proprietor Robert Schoelkopf. He had the same faculty of perception that a lot of family including curators from small museums, were coming to novel York to start collecting on the contrary didn't know where to secure started."

The day's presentations did little to answer either the broader philosophical questions raised by the agency of the idea of collecting photographs, or the nuts-and-bolts questions of the convert private collectors and museum personnel to whom the symposium was pitched. The panel was a carefully balanced assemblage of individuals from a wide variety of professional backgrounds; as might be wait fored each viewed the problems of collecting from his have a title to perspective.

The important role collectors have played in preserving the photographs from the past that still survive was pointed up through Eugenia Parry Janis, an art historian at Wellesley and moderator of the meeting. Calling of that kind European collectors of the early twentieth hundred as Gabriel Cromer "those passionate amassers of images otherwise destined for destruction," Janis noted that a great many early photographers are known to us by the agency of name only, and not through work.

Arguing the need for more thorough scholarship to determine the value to collectors of specific photographs was Weston Naef, Assistant Curator at of recent origin York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Naef discussed the distinctions that dexterouss make between fine-art prints, and hinted that a greater degree of connoisseurship among photography collectors will be straited to recognize subtle differences in the nature and quality of pictures that will influence financial value.

The tremendous increases in prices for of advanced age photographs that the last several years have brought were referr to above and over throughout the day. Speakers harked back to earlier years, when important prints were priced true cheaply, either to recall those days wistfully or to point on the outside how much appreciation of the value of photographs has increased, along with their prices, since then.

But several of the speakers urg that the increased interest in the medium, throw backed and encouraged by the price resound be accompanied by a better understanding of the nature and importance of photography. "We have to determine what this medium is about," declared Peter C Bunnell Associate Professor of Art History at Princeton University and Director of the Art Museum there. Urging increased scholarship and research into the history of the medium, Bunnell noted that "if anything can be said to be rare in photography, it is intelligent minds."

"No single remembers the collections which have been simply amassed," he reminded the assembled collectors and curators. "The singles that are remembered are those that have been selected"

Nathan Lyon Director of the Visual Studies Workshop and the single active photographer on the panel, also urg that the importance of photography be recognized. "It's important to move the intrinsic value of photographs to the world of ideas, or to the idea of the world they have produced" he said.