A Gust of Photo-Philia
Photography in the Art Museum
Alexandra Moschovi
The
first transnational history of photography’s accommodation in the art museum
Photography was long
regarded as a “middle-brow” art by the art institution. Yet, at the turn of the
millennium, it became the hot, global art of our time. In this book—part
institutional history, part account of shifting photographic theories and
practices—Alexandra Moschovi tells the story of photography’s accommodation in
and as contemporary art in the art museum. Archival research of key exhibitions
and the contrasting collecting policies of MoMA, Tate, the Guggenheim, the
V&A, and the Centre Pompidou offer new insights into how art as photography
and photography as art have been collected and exhibited since the 1930s.
Moschovi argues that this accommodation not only changed photography’s status
in art, culture, and society, but also played a significant role in the
rebranding of the art museum as a cultural and social site.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
Introduction
1. Photography Itself
2. The Art(s) of Photography
3. Art as Photography, Photography as Art
4. Postmedia Pictures
5. Between Images
Postscript
Format: Monograph - ebook
332 pages
b&w images
ISBN: 9789461663696
Publication: December 17, 2020
Series: Lieven Gevaert Series 29
Languages: English
Steffen Siegel, Bd. 3 Nr. 4 (2022): 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur, https://doi.org/10.11588/xxi.2022.4.91686
This is an important and interesting book. […] this book is a real contribution to exhibition histories and/or curatorial studies, with a particular focus on large national museums. […] Moschovi's attention to the tensions between modes, and their non-resolution as photography is established in each museum, is what makes this book so fascinating.
Alison Green, Source, Issue 106, Autumn 2021
https://www.source.ie/archive/issue106/is106contents.php
Dans tous les cas, cet ouvrage est dense, certes, mais il n’intéressera pas que les amateurs de musées ou les spécialistes des institutions. C’est d’abord une histoire de l’histoire de la photographie.
The result of two decades of research into art institutions’ engagement with photography in all its forms, this book is a detailed and archivally-engaged examination of photography’s accommodation in the art museum.
Mary Pelletier, The Classic Platform, 26 May 2021
It retraces the history of how photography entered the art museum, a place where it initially did not have access to, and how this history has been a local as well as global phenomenon, as demonstrated by the five case studies that constitute the core of this book: MoMA, Tate, the Guggenheim, the V&A, and the Centre Pompidou. Moschovi unpacks these histories in great detail and a sharp eye for context, but also with great writing pleasure and craft, which makes her study almost a page-turner. [...] Moschovi succeeds in writing a new form of art history, with museums and photography as key players, which strikes the right balance between internal (artistic, historical) and external (political, financial, social) perspectives and concerns. Two or more worlds, perhaps, but the author gives us the best of them by bringing them together in this innovative study.
Jan Baetens, Leonardo Reviews Archive, April 2021