Carol Vogel reports on the Philadelphia Museum’s acquisition of a huge body of photographer Paul Strand’s work:
Although the museum already had one of the most complete holdings of Strand’s work, now through a combination of partial and promised gifts from the Philadelphia philanthropists Lynne and Harold Honickman, Marjorie and Jeffrey Honickman and Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest, it has received 1,422 images from the Paul Strand Archive at the Aperture Foundation, which is based in New York.
The museum also entered into an agreement with the foundation to buy an additional 1,276 photographs from its holdings. (In 1983 Aperture absorbed the Paul Strand Foundation, formed by his widow, Hazel Kinsbury Strand, shortly after the photographer’s death in 1976.) “We are in the process of raising funds and have a five-year commitment to do so,’’ Timothy Rub, the Philadelphia Museum’s director, said. Although Mr. Rub declined to say how much money he needs, photography experts value the purchase at between $8 million and $10 million.
From its founding in 1952, the nonprofit Aperture Foundation was never meant to be a collecting institution. Besides having a Chelsea gallery where it presents photography exhibitions, its main mission is as a magazine and book publisher.
A Trove of Paul Strand Photos for Philadelphia Museum of Art (Arts Beat/New York Times)
