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• Issue #31
• Article

By Alex Novak

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has acquired the remaining photography collection of Julian Levy from Levy's widow, Jean Farley Levy. The 2,000-plus images include the work of over 130 artists. The acquisition was part gift and part purchase made possible by a contribution from Lynne and Harold Honickman, who are longtime Philadelphia residents and supporters of the museum. It is the first significant acquisition of photography by the museum since the Stieglitz gifts. Coming on top of the selection of Katherine Ware as curator of photography less than two years ago, the purchase perhaps signals a renewed interest in this area by the museum's director Anne Harnoncourt.

Unlike most similar institutions, the museum has made few significant purchases of photography up until now, depending largely on its past relationship with Aperture for additions to its collection. Although the Art Institute of Chicago received many of the top images in the collection back in the late 1970s, this new acquisition still has many fine images, including Charles Sheeler's Side of White Barn and Atget's Versailles. Levy had one of the first photography galleries in the U.S...

Christie's East will move to Rockefeller Center, and the auction house is thinking of selling off most of its London properties and consolidating and moving its entire operation to Somerset House near Trafalgar Square or some other location. On the other hand, rumors of Sotheby's London photography operations moving to its new salesroom in West London are apparently inaccurate. Expert Philippe Garner told me recently there is no current plan to move the department from its New Bond Street location...

Photographer and writer Eudora Welty has passed away. She was 92. In 1973 Miss Welty was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, The Optimist's Daughter. Random House published a collection of Welty's pictures of the 1930s depression in 1971 called One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression. Welty even had an email program (Eudora) named after her because the software developer liked a short story by Welty...

A great new book and resource, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West, a Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865 by Peter Palmquist and Thomas Kailbourn is now available for $125 in hardbound copy from Carl Mautz Publishing at 530-478-1610. You can email Carl at cmautz@nccn.net. He is the American distributor. As a special deal to our readers, he will send the book out postage free in the U.S., if ordered within the next 30 days, but you have to tell him about seeing it in the newsletter. The book contains very substantive biographies of over 1500 photography-related people, mostly photographers. The introduction is really a major history of early photography for the region. There are some interesting illustrations (250 in all), particularly in the introduction, but it is the information-loaded biographies that make this such an invaluable new reference.

Novak has over 48 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formerly board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.

Novak has had photography articles and columns published in several newspapers, the American Photographic Historical Society newsletter, the Photograph Collector and the Daguerreian Society newsletter. He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, etc.