by Ansel Adams
Beaumont’s interest in photography as his specialty in art history had grown, and soon after his return to New York, he developed the concept of the Department of Photography at MOMA. The museum had already expressed some interest in photography. There had been “Murals by American Painters and Photographers” in 1932; a large retrospective exhibit that Beaumont curated in 1937, “Photography 1839–1937”; “American Photographs by Walker Evans” in 1938; and in 1940, “War Comes to the People, A Story Written with the Lens by Therese Bonney.” But a permanent Department of Photography would mean the very first long-term commitment to photography as a fine art by a major museum.
With the intelligent benefaction of David McAlpin and the guidance of Beaumont, the fledgling department was successful from the start. David Hunter McAlpin is one of those rare beacons and anchors who make things possible for other human beings: personally in friendship and encouragement, but also with his years of leadership and financial support of the arts and the humanities. He is a true philanthropist, functioning in an aura of personal modesty and simplicity. Without Dave, the Department of Photography at MOMA might not have been achieved for decades.
Dave wrote to me on September 7, 1940:
Dear Adams,
Newhall and I both feel it essential for you to be here for six months to a year as a member of the committee and special advisor in launching the Photo Dept.
The catch of course about getting it started is to raise the cash. The trustees have asked me to be chairman of the committee. We can hardly go out to solicit funds till we have something tangible. So I have suggested that we make a group. The expenses of a six months organization period would not be great. Perhaps we can then have something to go and launch a full fledged plan and sell it to the trustees—their attitude is receptive.
I have accepted the chairmanship provided you would come and stay here and devote as much time as necessary and serve as advisor, organizer and policy director. And I have offered to underwrite your retainer. So it’s in the bag if you can be induced. And I don’t know what “if” or “no” means! I realize it’s a big thing to ask but there would be many pleasant sides to it—Stieglitz and O’Keeffe. A real visit to N. Y. C. New faces—a bit of opera and music on the side. New scenes to interpret, etc.
This letter was followed closely by one ten days later from Beaumont:
Dear Ansel:
Things have been happening during the last few days! The creation of a Department of Photography is a fact; the Trustees have approved of the plans I submitted to them last July, and have appointed me Curator. Dave McA has accepted chairmanship of the Committee, and last night he and I met with John Abbott (Executive Director) for a long discussion. The Trustees have not been able to give any money for the project at the present time, although they have allowed me to spend more time on photography. Our plan is to spend some time in developing the department up to a point where we can interest outside money sources—foundations, interested millionaires, commercial firms.
We are very excited that you are able to come on. Dave gave me the facts in your letter, and it seems to us ideal to have you come on for the six weeks beginning October 15. That will give you a chance to become acquainted with the setup here, and it will give the Museum a chance to get acquainted with you. We’d rather like to decide about the rest of the schedule after you get here. There are a lot of things to be worked out, as you can well imagine. In the meanwhile Dave and I will be sounding out various committee members, and getting things lined up for an intensive campaign. We were delighted with your cooperative and enthusiastic attitude as outlined in your letter to Dave, and await your arrival eagerly. It seems hardly worthwhile going into all the details of what we can do in this letter—I think that you have a good idea of my attitude from our California conversations, and I hope that you have the same of mine. Isn’t it swell of Dave to get the thing started?
PS I have written Stieglitz about the plans in general, and have appealed to him for advice and counsel—I want him to feel that he is in on the work from the very foundation.
We all felt it extremely important that Stieglitz be involved in the formation of the new Department of Photography. Beaumont, Dave, and I saw him as the leader of the photographic arts in the first half of the twentieth century. However, Stieglitz acted the curmudgeon to the end and on April 8, 1938, he wrote:
My Dear Adams:
I have nothing against the Museum of Modern Art except one thing & that is that politics & the social set-up come before all else. It may have to be that way in order to run an institution. But I refuse to believe it.… In short the Museum has really no standard whatever. No integrity of any kind. Of course there is always a well meaning—“the best we could do under the circumstances.” Newhall did come to me for some of my prints. I again tried to make clear to him why I couldn’t join up with the undertaking. Something happened here while he was present which I think was an eye opener to him. As he left I told him that as an individual I was interested in him. I’d look at his work at any time he chose—but as an official of the Modern Museum I feared I could be of no use as I felt that in spite of its good intentions the Museum was doing more harm than good. The American idea that always something must be better than nothing I disagree with absolutely. Quality throughout does play a role. Well, the world is in quite a mess so why expect its institutions to be otherwise. As a worker—a workman—one can keep one’s integrity in spite of all pitfalls & indifference on part of the overwhelming majority of people who don’t give a damn one way or another.… I can imagine how driven & how tired you are. But it’s good for me to know that there is Ansel Adams loose somewhere in this world of ours.…
My love to you & again deepest thanks.
Stieglitz
Beaumont and I curated the first exhibit of the new Department of Photography at MOMA, “Sixty Photographs.” It opened on December 31, 1940, and was an unqualified success. It comprised a vigorous survey of photography from the 1840s Calotypes of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson to 1938 photographs by Edward Weston and myself. Stieglitz relented just enough to let us include his work.
I recall the challenging experience I had with Arnold Genthe in obtaining his photographs for that exhibition. I knew Genthe slightly; he was a bit before my time, and I did not have many opportunities to meet with him except in New York when he was of advanced age. He was a brilliant and courteous man and a leading portrait photographer of his time. Beaumont and I very much wanted Genthe represented, yet we could find no print that was good enough for display. Because I had met him, it was suggested I visit and express the desire that he be included in the exhibit, but, as no adequate prints could be found, would he permit me to make exhibition prints from two negatives? Naturally, he would see the prints and reject or approve them before they were hung.
I was quite apprehensive approaching a famous man with a possibly infamous request, but I plumbed my well of courage and called on him in his downtown studio. He graciously received me, introduced me to a pair of elderly ladies who were assisting him in the compilation of his work, and asked me the purpose of the visit. I explained the best I could, literally stammering with embarrassment.
He agreed with enthusiasm to my printing The Street of the Gamblers (1904) and View Down Clay Street, San Francisco (April 1906), the latter the world-famous image of the great fire that followed the earthquake of April 18. These were beautiful photographs; The Street of the Gamblers, made with postcard-size Kodak roll film, anticipated Cartier-Bresson in its amazing immediacy of the moment and the clear spacing of the several men walking in the Chinatown street. Genthe found the negatives and gave them to me, saying, “I know your work and I am indeed happy you are to make prints from them.” I was quite overcome.
I did not wish to imitate his style (he used greenish, textured papers and a warm-tone print developer), so I decided I would make them in the modern mode: glossy paper toned in selenium. The negatives were very difficult, but
I finally achieved what I considered fine prints. I mounted one of each and took them to him. He looked at them carefully, while I trembled in my newly shined shoes, then said, “Why didn’t I print them that way in the first place?” I almost fainted with relief, expressed my pleasure that he was pleased, and returned to the museum.
I find it interesting to see the list of photographers whom we selected in 1940 to represent all of creative photography since its beginnings: Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Eugene Atget, Ruth Bernhard, Mathew Brady, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harold Edgerton, P. H. Emerson, Walker Evans, Arnold Genthe, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Dorothea Lange, Henry LeSecq, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Moholy-Nagy, anonymous news photographs, Dorothy Norman, T. H. O’Sullivan, Eliot Porter, Man Ray, Henwar Rodakiewicz, Charles Sheeler, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Luke Swank, Brett Weston, Edward Weston, and Clarence White.
When World War II arrived, Beaumont enlisted with the air corps and gave distinguished service as a photo-interpreter in the Mediterranean theater. Much of the escalating work load at MOMA during the war years fell on Nancy’s shoulders, as acting curator, and on mine, as vice president of the photography committee.
Because of these responsibilities, I spent a number of weeks each year in New York. I still tried to practice the piano daily, and so I had a grand piano installed at the Newhall apartment on 53rd Street. The apartment agent made it very clear that there could be no music after ten P.M. The routine was fairly consistent: we would finish our tasks at the museum about seven, then have dinner. We both carried on a lively correspondence with Beaumont, and if a letter had arrived that day we would read it aloud and Beaumont would seem to be with us.
Italy, 27 February, 1944
Dean Ansel,
I was very pleased with your letter of 5 February. Yes, the more I think of creative photography, the more I realize how true it is that what counts in art is what is inside of us. That is what separates the artist from the layman—the ability to recognize and the skill to transmit to others those observations and feelings. How much we have to do when all of this is over! A fight for the real recognition of photography, not the intellectual acceptance of it which, I am afraid, is as far as we have gotten.
After washing the dishes, writing letters, and maybe an hour of piano, at ten I walked from their 53rd Street apartment to the Algonquin Hotel at 44th Street. Even though I had what undoubtedly was the smallest bedroom in the establishment, I found the Algonquin a most agreeable hotel; its enduring charm still exists.
The impact of New York City was for me one of expanding waves of contacts and events, washing an endless shore of personalities and activities. I remember a bright New York day: spring, flowers, a bit of snap in the morning stride of pedestrians. Nancy and I had been invited to the home of Charles and Musya Sheeler. Under light clouds and a gentle sky we drove to Irvington along the Hudson River. At about five we arrived at the Sheeler home, a beautiful, small granite structure, formerly the gate house of a large Hudson River estate. Musya greeted us with warmth and Charles with his usual austere admission of pleasure to see us. He was a deceptively shy man, firm and quiet, and a great artist. I admire his photography but believe he was even more impressive as a painter. Musya was a vibrant Russian: a former ballet dancer who had an abundance of affection for their friends.
Many Sunday afternoons were spent at the Sheelers’. On this particular day with Nancy and I visiting the Sheelers, there was a light, fragrant breeze, more friends arriving, more tea and vodka dispensed. Musya was queenly in her dispensation of the vodka and cookies. The euphoria expanded while the mind vacated the cranium. Sheeler and I reminisced about an amusing incident at a recent photographic opening. After viewing the exhibition and both needing a cigarette, we had stepped outside. After a few minutes he had reflected, “Adams, isn’t it remarkable how photography has advanced without improving?” I consider this a prophetic statement.
Realizing I had a MOMA meeting at nine the next morning, I reestablished myself to a certain extent with very strong coffee, but it took an hour to convince Nancy that Manhattan beckoned. The drive back to Gotham was not the pliant and delicate journey of the earlier hours; people were roaring about in their cars: honking, passing, crowding, scaring, but we did make it to West 53rd Street.
We had to face some kind of a dinner, because the Sheelers entertained with a maximum of alcohol and a minimum of solid gastronomic support. A close-by eatery provided some essential greasy protein and some unneeded bourbon. I drifted into the Algonquin about midnight. At eight Monday morning I wafted myself out of bed, into a shower, then to breakfast seen through a fog of repentance, then to the meeting, which, by the grace of God, had been postponed.
That Monday was not a bright day. The springtime of yesterday was only a memory. The sparkle in the stride of the multitude was now a drag. MOMA seemed like a columbarium, and I had no flowers to put into the appropriate urnal niches. Another week in New York had begun. My inner vision sought the Sierra and the Pacific shores.
“What in hell am I doing here, far from home and family and Yosemite?”
Time and again I would come to New York, excited with professional and social ambitions and promises, only to be physically frayed and spiritually disemboweled within a few weeks. In that penitentiary environment, most of the museums and galleries seem to exist in a kind of purgatory, either to accept the fluorescent heaven of a final resting place or the hell of obscurity. I have yet to understand the harmony of magnificent apartments, hideous ghettos, industrial deserts, furs, rags, Tiffany’s and Joe’s curio shop, beautiful women (virtue unclassified), unbeautiful women (virtue assured), and the people of strangeness everywhere. Yet, for a time all this appeals in some curious and compelling way. It represents a conflict of many decades: what charm, what grace, what culture—and what horror!
As wonderful as my good friends were, the city would finally defeat me and I would flee west. For me the western border of beauty and wonder was roughly marked by Denver: west of Denver promised home, east of Denver was an alien world.
While Beaumont was in Italy during the war, Edward Steichen began to muscle past Nancy and me, intruding himself on the MOMA photography department scene. Steichen did not like Nancy as much as she detested him. As a friend said, “He has the ability to make women cry and he revels in it.” I rarely saw Nancy cry, but almost every time I did it was after she had had a meeting with Steichen.
Steichen had been appointed a captain in the navy, in charge of the program to photographically document the Pacific war. There is no doubt of the importance of this project or of his military service. He also arranged for the production of gargantuan exhibits that were displayed at MOMA, such as “Power in the Pacific” and “The Road to Victory.” These shows had nothing to do with the creative and aesthetic aspects of photography, the true province of a museum of art. They were patriotic and inspiring in the tempo and timbre of blatant wartime propaganda. It would have been much more appropriate to have presented them in Madison Square Garden, where they would have commanded an even greater audience. Beaumont returned on leave and was properly disturbed.
Edward Steichen and I were at swords’ points from the moment we met in 1933. On the same trip when I first met Stieglitz, I was eager to meet all of the leading photographic lights. I phoned for a possible appointment with Steichen, and his secretary set ten the following morning, saying, “I am sure Mr. Steichen would love to see you!” I arrived at ten and waited. The great man appeared in a flurry of preoccupation and said, “I can’t see you now; come back sometime, maybe next week,” and then disappeared through a door with the obvious hint that I was quite unnecessary to him and to the world. I was naturally a bit miffed, but I thought that he must be busy and harassed. I returned but never obtained a meeting during that visit to New York. I felt his arrogance, not because he was too busy to see me, but because of his manner of disdain and his abiding sense of power and prestige.
; Stieglitz reacted to my impressions by saying, “That’s Steichen. Keep your distance and you will be happier.” Steichen had been one of Stieglitz’s greatest supporters in the early days of his first gallery called Little Galleries of the Photo Secession, at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York. Steichen genuinely helped increase American understanding of modern art by finding important avant-garde work in Europe that he recommended to Stieglitz in the first decade of this century. They were very close for many years until Steichen drew away from the more subtle world of art and concentrated on advertising photography. Stieglitz felt that Steichen had sold out.
At the time he assumed the naval position in World War II, Steichen telephoned me in Yosemite, saying in a hearty voice, “Adams, I want you to run my laboratory in Washington.” As I was desperately trying to find some possible niche in the war effort, this seemed to be an excellent opportunity and I put aside Steichen for country. Assured that I would soon hear from him, I waited for the promised call of the what, when, and where of my military future. After another month I read in a photographic magazine that Steichen had appointed someone else.
World War II ended; Beaumont returned to the museum and found that many of the trustees and other powers swore allegiance to Steichen’s ideas about photography and exhibitions. On February 23, 1946, Beaumont wrote to me:
… As near as I can make out I’m being screwed. A memorandum was drawn up by the subcommittee for presentation to Steichen… and it was a complete rolling out of the red carpet to Steichen. Stuck down in the memorandum was a statement that, “It is your expressed desire (i.e. Steichen’s) that Mr. Newhall continue his position as Curator of Photography.” I felt that this was not an adequate guarantee that I could continue to do work of importance in the museum.