Irving Penn Foundation presents 28 images to Chazen Museum of Art – The Badger Herald

In the late months of 2025, UW’s personal Chazen Museum of Art was given a collection of Irving Penn pictures by the Irving Penn Foundation in honor of John Szarkowski, a UW alumnus and former pictures curator on the Museum of Modern Art, based on a press release from the Chazen. 

Irving Penn was one of many twentieth century’s nice photographers, identified for his arresting photographs, masterful printmaking and modern methods, based on the Irving Penn Foundation. 

John Szarkowski performed an influential function in establishing Penn as a advantageous arts photographer. Most notably Szarkowski featured Penn’s work in a significant retrospective exhibition at MoMA in 1984, championing Penn’s inventive legacy all through his profession by bringing Penn’s pictures into quite a few exhibitions. Placing Irving Penn’s pictures within the assortment of a educating museum is a becoming option to commemorate the event, based on the Irving Penn Foundation’s announcement of the gift.

The Irving Penn Foundation reached out to the Chazen Museum of Art in 2025, Van Vleck curator of works on paper James Wehn mentioned. The basis proposed the reward of Penn’s pictures in honor of the a hundredth anniversary of Szarkowski’s delivery, falling in December of 2025, based on Wehn. 

“I jumped at this opportunity because photography is a very important modern medium,” Wehn mentioned. “We want to develop that part of the Chazen’s collection”.

The Chazen initially had one among Penn’s pictures of their assortment, and acquired 28 pictures from the Irving Penn Foundation, an enormous enhance within the variety of works the Chazen has from the extremely influential photographer, Wehn mentioned. 

The pictures span the breadth of Irving Penn’s profession, from a few of his earliest works within the 1930’s as much as the 12 months 2000. Penn’s work enhances works by different American artists who’re working at across the identical time, based on Wehn.

“They offer insights into American culture, visual culture and material culture,” Wehn mentioned. “Especially the middle of the twentieth century into the latter part of the twentieth century”.

Penn’s curiosity in pictures began in road pictures earlier than his eventual industrial Vogue pictures. 

Penn’s private initiatives exterior of business pictures vary from a sequence of nude images of girls, to literal rubbish to cigarettes, based on Wehn. 

“We have this ability to represent work that were his personal artistic projects that often capture his talents for commercial photography, but then translate that into fine art,” Wehn mentioned. 

The images might be used to reinforce present holdings of pictures from the late Nineteen Thirties to the tip of the 20 th century, based on the Chazen’s press launch. 

Visitors could make an appointment to go to the Chazen’s Chen household lecture room and request to see the images, and the images might be seen now on the Chazen’s online collection.