Kimbell Art Museum presents Photography’s First Century: Masterworks from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, October 4, 2026–January 17, 2027

The Kimbell’s first-ever exhibition celebrating the artwork of images, at the side of the medium’s bicentennial

Fort Worth, Texas — The Kimbell Art Museum will current the particular exhibition Photography’s First Century: Masterworks from the Bibliothèque nationale de France from October 4, 2026, by way of January 17, 2027, within the Renzo Piano Pavilion. The Kimbell’s first-ever images exhibition, it’ll hint the historical past of images’s first 100 years of exploration and discovery, from the rise of the daguerreotype and the calotype within the 1840s to the age of modernism between the World Wars. Organized at the side of France’s nationwide library in Paris in celebration of the bicentennial of images’s invention, this survey of greater than 150 photographs consists of work by Henri Le Secq, Gustave le Gray, Félix Tournachon (Nadar), Édouard Baldus, Louis-Émile Durandelle, Eugène Atget, André Kertesz, Rogi André, Man Ray, and Brassaï. 

On the Boulevard Saint-Jacques by Brassai

“The Kimbell’s first photography exhibition is drawn entirely from what is arguably the world’s most important collection of photographs, one that dates back to the birth of the medium in France in the nineteenth century,” stated Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “We are fortunate to partner with the Bibliothèque nationale—one of the world’s greatest libraries, where centuries of human thought and creative output are preserved—and to be part of the international celebration of photography’s bicentennial.” 

The exhibition is organized alongside roughly chronological strains, first introducing guests to images’s invention and earliest years, showcasing uncommon historic paperwork and pictures, earlier than starting explorations of the earliest technological improvements: the daguerreotype and the calotype. These two sections embody works of historic, creative, and technological significance, equivalent to Charles Hugo’s daguerreotype portrait of his father, the novelist Victor Hugo; archaeologist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey’s daguerreotypes, documenting Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and the Khayrbak Mosque (also called the Blue Mosque) in Cairo, palms in Athens, and historic cedars in Beirut; nonetheless lifes by Henri Le Secq, seen in uncommon paper negatives; and Eugène Cuvelier’s poetic calotype landscapes of the Forest of Fontainebleau. 

The exhibition additionally consists of a number of sections that current concentrated explorations of particular person photographers, revealing every artist’s explicit contribution to the medium in depth. Portrait pictures by Félix Tournachon, generally known as Nadar, for instance, show the artist’s pioneering achievements in the usage of fastidiously modulated mild to {photograph} such worldwide notables as Cuban singer María Martínez and Italian composer Gioachino Rossini; Parisian artists Honoré Daumier, Gustave Doré, and Antoine-Augustin Préault; writers Alexandre Dumas and Henri Murger; and celebrated beauties Princess Cantacuzene and actress Marie Laurent.

Alexandre Dumas by Felix Nadar

Believing that the {photograph} may rival portray, the pioneering Gustave le Gray created moody views of the Mediterranean coast that seize the dramatic mild of each the ocean and the sky—virtually inconceivable to {photograph} concurrently in his day—by making luxurious prints from a number of negatives. His up to date Édouard Baldus’s fame was constructed together with the trendy infrastructure of France itself, because the artist gained commissions to doc architectural and engineering marvels, together with the 1860s building of the Paris–Lyon–Méditerranée railway and the picturesque websites alongside its size. Equally famend for his contributions to nineteenth-century architectural images, Louis-Émile Durandelle is represented within the exhibition by way of a collection of pictures that doc the development of the Paris Opéra (1861–75) commissioned by its architect Charles Garnier.

The pictures of Baldus and Durandelle have been sure in albums for presentation or sale. Another part of the exhibition is dedicated to albums of pictures assembled for personal use, starting with a collaborative collection of images by the painter Eugène Delacroix and photographer Eugène Durieu. Created over two days in 1854, these have been staged by the famed Delacroix—who had change into fascinated by images, particularly research of the nude determine—and shot by Durieu. The prints of nude fashions have been assembled in an album, and after Delacroix’s demise got here into the possession of a good friend who gave them to the Bibliothèque nationale in 1899. Also on view are albums containing works by Henri Le Secq and his mates; by the household of Victor Hugo; and by Edgar Degas and his mates the author Ludovic Halévy, his spouse Louise, and their son Daniel. 

As guests to the exhibition cross the brink of the 20th century, they are going to encounter the famend works of Eugène Atget, whose evocative Paris road scenes collectively seize a poignant portrait of a metropolis in transformation, because the remnants of vieux Paris—the Paris of previous—gave option to modernization. The work of the American-born Man Ray follows, together with a few of his best-known works, like Sleeping Woman (Natascha) (1931); a putting Rayograph: Revolver and Serpentine, made by inserting objects on a sheet of photograph paper and exposing it to mild; and portraits of Jacqueline Goddard, Gertrude Stein, and fellow photographer Lee Miller, some incorporating his signature solarization. Similarly iconic photographs by the Hungarian-born French photographer generally known as Brassaï embody works from his well-known collection Paris de Nuit (1932), Madame Bijou on the Bar de la Lune, Montmartre (1932), and Sleeping Worker on the Folies Bergères (1933). 

Sleeping Woman by Man Ray

The part Rogi André and Photography Between the Wars presents a choice of the disciplined but nuanced portraits of early twentieth-century intellectuals and artists by the photographer, born Rosza Klein in Hungary in 1900. Among these are likenesses of Peggy Guggenheim, Alberto Giacometti, Piet Mondrian, and Dora Maar, Pablo Picasso’s lover and muse, herself a photographer. André’s photographs seem alongside pictures by her husband of roughly 4 years, André Kertész, and a choice of photographic publications from the inter-war years by artists of their circle.

The exhibition devotes two chapters to the concept of a single persona as explored by lots of the most well-known photographers of the early twentieth century. First, exhibition guests meet visible artist, style and textile designer, and shade theorist Sonia Delaunay. Born within the Russian Empire, she arrived in France as a twenty-year-old in 1905 and emerged within the Parisian avant-garde with work displayed alongside works by Picasso, Georges Braque, and André Derain earlier than marrying the painter Robert Delaunay in 1910. By the Twenties, her focus shifted to couture, which she had documented in pictures by such artists as Germaine Krull and Thérèse Bonney. In posed photographs of fashions and portraits of the artist herself, photographers tackled the issue of representing Delaunay’s daring geometry and attribute juxtaposition of complementary colours by way of the black-and-white medium of images. 

As the concluding chapter on this sweeping view of the primary century of the medium of images within the nation of its beginning, the exhibition brings viewers face-to-face with Pablo Picasso by way of a choice of pictures from the Thirties. Another exploration of a single topic seen by way of many lenses, the grouping consists of photographs by Cecil Beaton, Man Ray, Rogi André, and particularly Brassaï. First launched in 1932 when Brassaï obtained a fee to {photograph} Picasso’s studio and sculptures, the 2 artists turned mates and continued to work collectively all through their careers. As famous within the exhibition catalogue essay on the Picasso pictures, “Brassaï knew Kertész, who had introduced Rogi André to the medium; Rogi André frequented the Surrealists, whom Picasso passed through without ever submitting to them… All these photographers are practitioners of multiple curiosities—painters, draftsmen, filmmakers, writers—for whom photography is not a specialty but one instrument among others.” 

“It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with Sylvie Aubenas and Flora Triebel at the Bibliothèque nationale to select the most intriguing examples for the show from their collection,” stated George Shackelford, deputy director of the Kimbell Art Museum and organizing curator of the exhibition. “It’s a collection unlike any other, filled with rare and surprising things, from the manuscripts documenting the invention of photography in the 1830s to celebrated photographs by the Parisian masters of the inter-war years. Around every corner in Photography’s First Century, there will be something unexpected to discover.” 

ORGANIZATION AND CATALOGUE

This exhibition is organized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Kimbell Art Museum in collaboration with Manifesto Expo and at the side of France’s celebration of the bicentennial of the invention of images. 

The exhibition’s curators are Madame Sylvie Aubenas, director of the Department of Prints and Photography emerita, and Madame Flora Triebel, curator of the nineteenth-century images assortment on the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Its presentation on the Kimbell is organized by George T. M. Shackelford, deputy director. 

The 336-page catalogue reproduces every exhibited work in addition to a wealthy number of comparative photographs. It features a preface by Gilles Pécout, president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and a foreword by Kimbell director Eric M. Lee, adopted by essays by Aubenas and Triebel, who additionally contributed discussions of every of the sections of plates. An illustrated chronology of the primary 100 years of images in France is accompanied by a choice of evocative texts written by the artists themselves and later critics; a wealthy bibliography will probably be helpful for additional analysis. 

SUPPORT

Promotional assist for the Kimbell Art Museum and its exhibitions is supplied by American Airlines, the Fort Worth Report, and NBC 5. Additional assist is supplied by Arts Fort Worth and the Texas Commission on the Arts. 

VISITOR INFORMATION

Exhibition tickets are $18 for adults, $16 for seniors and college students, $14 for youngsters ages 6–11, and free for youngsters below age 6. Audio guides can be found for $4. 

Admission is half-price all day on Tuesday and after 5 p.m. on Friday. Additional reductions can be found on-site for Okay–12 academics, active-duty navy, and SNAP program recipients. Museum members obtain limitless, free entry to all particular exhibitions and free audio guides. Admission to the museum’s everlasting assortment is all the time free for everybody. 

The Kimbell Art Museum is open Tuesday by way of Thursday and Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Friday, midday–8 p.m.; and Sunday, midday–5 p.m. It is closed Monday, New Year’s Day, Juneteenth, July 4, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. For common data, name 817-332-8451. 

ABOUT THE KIMBELL ART MUSEUM

The Kimbell Art Museum, owned and operated by the Kimbell Art Foundation, is internationally famend for each its collections and its structure. The Kimbell’s collections vary in interval from antiquity to the 20th century and embody European work and sculptures by artists equivalent to Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bernini, Velázquez, Gainsborough, Monet, Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse, in addition to vital examples of Egyptian and classical antiquities. Also included are important works of Asian artwork from China, Japan, the Himalayas, and South and Southeast Asia; notable African sculptures primarily from West and Central Africa; and a variety of historic American artwork representing cultures throughout Mexico and Central and South America. 

The museum’s 1972 constructing, designed by the American architect Louis I. Kahn, is broadly considered one of many excellent architectural achievements of the trendy period. A second constructing, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, opened in 2013 and now supplies area for particular exhibitions, devoted lecture rooms, and a 289-seat auditorium with wonderful acoustics for music. For extra data, go to kimbellart.org.