MuseoMag: MuseoMag 2015_02

MuseoMag 2015_02

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Title:: MuseoMag

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Title:: MuseoMag 2015_02

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Title:: "The American Dream" of Edward Steichen: An homage to a career in photography

7 02 ‘ 2015 museomag This was an important step: for decades the mechani- cal fabrication of images had only been valued as tool to imitate or reproduce reality. Now photographs could be exhibited for their artistic and aesthetic qualities too. Steichen however would not be confined to one single field of action. To him photography had many applications and uses, and he experimented with them all. In World War I, for instance, he conducted missions of areal photography, while he directed a group of war photographers on an aircraft carrier during World War II. He worked in advertisement and in fashion: he knew the power of photographs to tell stories and convey messages – in black and white and in colour. His ubi- quity and expertise finally promoted him at age 68 to one of the most desirable positions in the art world, the Photography Department of New York’s Museum of Modern Art that he would direct from 1947 to 1962. Here, in the judgement seat, he would shape pho- tography in yet another way, opening the museum beyond the art canon to images from documentary or photo-journalistic origins. AN ESSENTIAL COMPLEMENT The MNHA collection, 178 photos bequeathed to the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg by the artist himself, per- fectly reflects Steichen’s wide-ranging career and the multiple facets of his own photographic work with fa- mous portraits, still lives, colour experiments and even a series of documentary photographs from a journey to Mexico. An alternating selection of photographic objects on display in a space exclusively dedicated to Edward Steichen in the newly opened Wiltheim wing is now accessible to the public. While, for conservation reasons, the number of exhibited artefacts is limited to twenty photographs, visitors can discover the entire collection on a flat-screen, explore the details and learn more about the artistic processes. “Steichen – The Pho- tographer” is the essential complement to the artist’s work as a curator presented in Clervaux, respectively in Dudelange through The Family of Man (1955) and The Bitter Years (1962). A long awaited and welcome addi- tion to Luxembourg’s photographic landscape! Françoise Poos To visit this permanent exhibition, follow the tour D. PERMANENT EXHIBITION AT THE WILTHEIM WING Die Steichen Collections im Großherzogtum Luxemburg vereinen Kunstwerke, die mit dem Erbe von Edward J. Steichen (1879 – 1973) in Zusammenhang stehen. Der ameri- kanische Künstler luxemburgischer Herkunft ist weltberühmt für seine bemerkenswerte Laufbahn im Bereich der Fotografie. Edward Steichen war nicht nur ein äußerst produk- tiver Fotograf, sondern auch Direktor der Fotoabteilung des New Yorker Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) wo er als Kurator inter- national anerkannt war. Die drei Sammlun- gen, die in Luxemburg ausgestellt sind, spie- geln diese zweigleisige Tätigkeit wider: im MNHA wird der Fotograf mit einer Auswahl sowohl persönlicher Aufnahmen als auch von Auftragswerken gewürdigt, während im Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA), mit den beiden Sammlungen The Family of Man (in Clervaux) und The Bitter Years (in Dude- lange), die kuratorische Arbeit Steichens zu sehen ist, die durch die Zusammenstellung anderer bekannter Fotografen beeindruckt. http://www.steichencollections.lu/

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