Where Art Thou?

If you hold on to your hat and hustle over to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, you might catch the Werner Bischoff exhibition. Bischoff did as much as anyone to define photojournalism in mid-century magazines like Du and Paris Match. His work appears on the walls in sixty or seventy frames, a pretty healthy sampling. The MIA staff have helpfully provided about 940 more images on a CD, for a grand total of about one drop in the bucket of Bischoff’s collected work. Which is a telling conundrum. Typically, no museum worth its endowment can exhibit more than a tiny fraction of what it owns.

More recently, the Web has allowed museums to hold their cards a bit further from their vests. I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the MIA’s extensive photography holdings beyond the Bischoff materials. In an idle moment scanning their collection online, I saw one of my favorite photos ever—a rusty tricycle composed by William Eggleston, titled “Memphis.” Personal obsession and screen resolution being what they are, I called the MIA right away to find out what it takes to get inside to see the real print, in the flesh. Ted Hartwell, the curator of photographs, agreed to be my guide with such eager grace that I wondered if they let just anyone off Third Avenue paw their priceless stuff.

In tweed and eyeglasses with gray hair and a charming smile, Hartwell fits nicely in the MIA’s small, book-lined photography offices. Meeting with him feels a little like talking to a professor in his office. On the other side of an unmarked door, thousands of photographs sit in a sort of platonic netherworld, art waiting to be reclaimed by living eyes.

The room is cold and bright, and it brims with black boxes stacked like drawers on metal shelves. The only hint of treasure within is printed on small white labels. Some bear anonymous catalog numbers, others show off iconic names like Hine, Evans, Friedlander, Muybridge—the heavy hitters of photographic history. Basically, it’s the most comprehensive collection in the region, outside of Chicago.

Though “Memphis” has made its way to the upstairs exhibition gallery within the last year, many works can go years without a public appearance. “What’s on the wall at any given time is only the top layer,” noted Hartwell. Less than five percent of the Institute’s 100,000-piece collection is on display at any given time.

After an appetizer of Gary Winogrand photographs—I’ve always enjoyed his slightly skewed New York street scenes—I asked Hartwell to track down the Eggleston print. In a moment, “Memphis” was perched without pretense in front of me.

To remove the added layer of a frame, to touch the matting and carefully peek beneath the protective film, to look as long as you like—well, think of it as the difference between merely meeting someone and establishing a relationship. You may think you like the look of her, but a relationship implies a whole other level of interaction, a deeper connection. Looking at the Eggleston print in person, I notice more, I relate more. It demands all of my attention.

Hartwell started the collection from scratch about thirty years ago. Through a carefully tended arbor of relationships with photographers, collectors, and donors, he has created a highly personal, stridently “balanced” collection. The holdings do have surprising breadth, ranging from Hartwell’s very first acquisition, a complete set of Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Works periodicals, to one of the nation’s definitive collections: the work of Gilles Peress, one of the contemporary artists who pioneered photography in the New Yorker.

Hartwell’s own list of rarely shown favorites from the collection includes both the famous and the obscure. He’s a fan of the relative unknowns Bruce Davidson and Bernice Abbott but is not afraid to embrace the overexposed Edward Weston. At the moment, he’s particularly fond of Adolf Fassbender. If I didn’t know how easy it is to request an audience with all this wonderful art, I’d be jealous of all the alone time Hartwell gets here and how frequently he must revise his list.—Stephanie Xenos


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