Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Publicizes Gift of Almost 2000 Photographs

The Viginia Museum of Fine Arts has introduced a donation of almost 2000 images from the Joy of Giving Something Inc., a nonprofit devoted to the photographic arts. The present includes works spanning the nineteenth century and the current day by greater than 450 artists.

The images come from the holdings of financier and former Dreyfus Corporation chief Howard Stein (1926–2011), who started accumulating images within the Nineteen Eighties. A notable underwriter of images exhibitions and books, Stein began the Joy of Giving Something Foundation (JGS) together with his spouse Janet in 1998 to advance artwork and academic programming within the discipline.

In 2017, JGS started donating works from Steins’s assortment to chose museums and universities, amongst them Syracuse University, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of the City of New York. In 2023 it gave the VMFA group of photographic portfolios and sequence, together with Paul Strand’s Photographs of Mexico (1940) and Larry Clark’s Tulsa (1980).

The current present represents a lot of the basis’s remaining assortment. Among its highlights are prints by nineteenth-century photographers Eugène Atget and Nadar; modernist works by Alfred Stieglitz, Dora Maar, László Moholy-Nagy, and Man Ray; and documentary images by Berenice Abbot, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Mary Ellen Mark. Contemporary items embrace works by Adam Fuss, David Goldblatt, Gilles Peress, Fazal Sheikh, and Rosalind Fox Solomon.

The donation additionally comes with a grant to assist the cataloging and housing of the gathering. As a part of main enlargement and renovation venture, the VMFA is planning 5 new images galleries, that are scheduled to open in 2027.

“Through its breadth and depth, this gift significantly elevates the museum’s standing as a center for the study and presentation of photography,” stated Dr. Sarah Kennel, VMFA’s Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center for Works on Paper. “It opens new directions for future collecting—particularly through greatly expanded holdings of 19th- and early 20th-century photography—and will serve as a cornerstone for exhibitions and rotations in the new photography galleries, offering visitors a richer and more inclusive view of the medium’s history across multiple voices and practices.”

Below, 13 iconic works from JGS’s present to the museum.