Opening reception:
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
6:00–8:00 pm

Exhibition on view:
Friday, March 2, 2012–Saturday, April 21, 2012

Aperture Foundation
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, two individuals that Art News ranks among the top ten photo collectors in the world, have amassed hundreds of the most iconic images reflecting the diverse nature of the past century of photography. Aperture Foundation pleased to announce the opening of Shared Vision: The Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla Collection of Photography, featuring over two hundred of those photographs that form one of the world’s best private collections. An exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville, a cultural resource of the University of North Florida, curated by Ben Thompson, MOCA’s curator, and Paul Karabinis, assistant professor of photography at UNF.

Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla’s collaboration hinges on a few underlying principles— mainly, to acquire works of major importance by leading photographers of their generation, and to focus on vintage prints. Although each of the collectors brings a different point of view to the photography—Gonzalez-Falla analyzes color and form, while Gilman responds to images on a more visceral level—these distinct approaches merge into a single, shared vision and emanate from the same goal: to collect photographs that move and inspire them.

Prominet photographers in the collection include Ansel Adams, Eugène Atget, Margaret Bourke-White,Walker Evans, Loretta Lux, Sally Mann, Richard Misrach, Doug and Mike Starn, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Alfred Stieglitz.

The exhibition, organized by MOCA, a cultural resource of the University of North Florida, curated by Ben Thompson, MOCA’s curator, and Paul Karabinis, assistant professor of photography at UNF, is supported by Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, The Haskell Company, Marilyn and Charles Gilman III, and Joan and Preston Haskell. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog published by MOCA and produced by Aperture Foundation. This catalog features selected photographs from the exhibition, with historical context about each image and the photographer, curatorial remarks from Ben Thompson and Paul Karabinis, and an exclusive interview with the collectors.

Related Items: 

Aperture has long been recognized as an excellent source for quality traveling exhibitions to museums, university galleries, libraries, and art centers around the world.  The foundation has a prestigious roster of exhibitions available at any given time, currently there are ten different exhibitions moving around the world and another four that are currently in development. These exhibitions reflect the diversity of our book program including monographic exhibitions from masters of the medium such as Bruce Davidson and Alex Webb to exciting group shows including The New York Times Magazine Photographs, a never before seen collection of some of the greatest photography ever published in the Magazine and reGeneration 2 a  introduction to the most promising photographers of the next generation. See below for more details on where our exhibitions are currently on view.

Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures

Dawoud Bey’s Class Pictures are portraits of American adolescence across the social, economic and racial spectrum. Now on display at Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA, the 40 x 30 inch color prints are paired with page-long statements written by the subjects–sometimes touching, sometimes funny, sometimes harrowing–that deepen our understanding of the most awkward age.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012–Saturday, March 10, 2012

Silver Eye Center for Photography
1015 East Carson Street
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
(412) 431-1810

The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography

The Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR presents The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Color Photography. Photographs and photo-based installations, many exhibited for the first time, “explore the territory of ‘undisclosed’ or abstract imagery in all its forms.” Single-artist installations examine the photographic process and visual culture in an effort to discover new optical possibilities and meaning-making.

Thursday, January 19, 2012–Sunday, March 18, 2012

Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery, Lewis and Clark College
0615 S.W. Palantine Hill Rd.
Portland, Oregon
(503) 768-7687

Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something

In Witchita, KA, the Witchita Art Museum presents A Couple of Ways of Doing Something—fifteen of Chuck Close’s intimate daguerreotype portraits of influential contemporary artists alongside Bob Holman’s beautifully typeset poems.  In addition, Close a curator has included examples of his other works taken from each daguerreotype in a variety of media, including tapestries and photogravures.

Sunday, January 29, 2012–Sunday, April 15, 2012

Wichita Art Museum
1400 West Museum Boulevard
Wichita, Kansas
(316) 268-4980

We update all traveling exhibition schedules on a regular basis on our website here and here.  Please feel free to contact Annette Booth, Exhibitions Manager at 212.946.7128 or at abooth@aperture.org for further information on hosting an exhibition at your venue!

Carrie Levy, Untitled from “Domestic Stages,” 2004. Courtesy the artist.

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W. M. Hunt Collection is now on view at the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film. This is the largest exhibition in the museum’s history with more than 500 “magical images of people in which the eyes cannot be seen” and is the first major U.S. showing of The Unseen Eye. The featured works range from daguerreotype to digital by photographers such as Berenice Abbot, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, among many more. This exhibition coincides with the release of the stunning Aperture publication The Unseen Eye.

Unseen in “The Unseen Eye,” An Evening with Susan Bright and W. M. Hunt
Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 7 pm
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St, New York, New York
Free and open to the public

The Unseen Eye: A Life in Photographs and other digressions …
a multi-media performance piece with W.M. Hunt
Friday, October 28, 2011, 7 pm
Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, New York, New York
Free and open to the public but please RSVP at rsvp@aperture.org

W.M. Hunt is a champion of photography— a collector, curator, consultant, writer, teacher, and fundraiser who lives and works in New York City. He was a founding partner of the prominent photography gallery Hasted Hunt in Chelsea, Manhattan and served as director of photography at Ricco/Maresca gallery. His new book The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious (Aperture) focuses on Collection Dancing Bear, currently his largest collection of photographs.

Exhibition on view: Saturday, October 1, 2011–Sunday, February 19, 2012

Museum admission: $12 adults, $10 seniors, and $5 students

George Eastman House
900 East Avenue
Rochester, New York
(585) 271-3361

Click here to find W.M Hunt’s book, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious (Aperture), now on sale!

Read Elizabeth Avedon’s interview with W.M. Hunt about his collection in La Lettre de la Photographie. Find out more about her visit on her blog.

Patti Smith, a legendary musician and visual artist, can now add successful author to her repertoire. Nominated for a National Book Award, Just Kids is Smith’s first book of prose with glimpses into her personal life that have never before been revealed. She sheds light on her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during the creative explosion of New York City in the late sixties and seventies, a time of youth and unfaltering friendship for the pair.

Smith’s photography was featured in Aperture magazine, issue 185.

On November 16th, the night before the awards ceremony, Smith and other nominees will read from their nominated books in New York City. For more information, click here.