“In Appreciation: Gifts in Honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker”
Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, promised gift of Karen Kelsey Duddlesten in honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker on the occasion of her retirement. © The Richard Avedon Foundation
Man Ray, Untitled (Photomontage Portrait of a Young Man), c. 1926, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Manfred Heiting in honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker on the occasion of her retirement. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris
Title
In Appreciation: Gifts in Honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker
Dates
June 23–October 11, 2015
Overview
Collectors, artists, and gallerists from around the country have generously donated or made promised gifts of more than 150 works to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker’s 39-year tenure as Curator of Photography.
A selection of these gifts will be on display in the special exhibition In Appreciation: Gifts in Honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker. Among the gift highlights are a large print of Richard Avedon’s Dovima with Elephants (1955); Nan Goldin’s multimedia Ballad of Sexual Dependency; a unique Man Ray photomontage from around 1926; a photograph by the medium’s inventor William Henry Fox Talbot from October 1840—now the earliest firmly dated photograph in the MFAH collection; and a luminous nighttime view of the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris, by Brassaï (1949). Other notable gifts and promised gifts include Gilbert and George’s Base, a 45-panel work from 2005; Harlem street scenes and portraits by Dawoud Bey from the 1980s; and photographs by Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Josef Koudelka, Ray Metzker, Lee Friedlander, and John Divola, among others.
Over the course of her career, Tucker’s passion for photography consistently produced path-breaking exhibitions and publications that made the MFAH a leader in the field and built the collection into one of the finest anywhere. Hired in 1976 to establish a Department of Photography, Tucker arrived at the MFAH to nascent holdings of 141 images. Today, the collection stands at more than 30,000 photographs by some 4,000 artists, created on each of the seven continents.
Tucker has organized or co-organized more than 40 exhibitions, authored dozens of publications, and acquired works by many leading 20th- and 21st-century photographers. Tucker will retire on June 30, 2015.
Location
The Caroline Wiess Law Building / 1001 Bissonnet Street
Media Contacts
Whitney Radley, publicist
wradley@mfah.org / 713.800.5345
Laine Lieberman, associate publicist
llieberman@mfah.org / 713.639.7516