Anne Wilkes Tucker
Encyclopedia
Anne Wilkes Tucker is an American museum curator
of photographic works.
Tucker was born in Baton Rouge
. She received a B.A. in Art History from Randolph Macon Woman's College in 1967, and an A.A.S in Photographic Illustration from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1968. In 1972, she received an M.F.A in Photographic History from the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, studying under Nathan Lyons
and Beaumont Newhall
.
in Rochester; as a Research Associate at the Gernsheim Collection at the University of Texas, Austin; and as a Curatorial Intern in the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art
, New York with a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts.
Tucker has worked for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston since 1976, when it possessed virtually no photographs. In February 1976, Target Stores, Inc. made its first donation to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) to begin the Target Collection of American Photography. The MFAH Photography department was established in December 1976, when Tucker was hired as a consultant to act as curator of photography. In 1978, she became the MFAH curator and in 1984 she was named the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography. Tucker has increased the museum's holdings of photographs to over 24,000 in 2008.
Tucker has organized more than forty exhibitions for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and elsewhere, including retrospectives for Brassaï
, Robert Frank
, Louis Faurer
, George Krause
, Ray K. Metzker, and Richard Misrach
; as well as surveys on Czech avant-garde photography, a survey of the history of Japanese photography, and a selection from the Allan Chasanoff Collection.
Many of these exhibitions have led to catalogues and monographic books, including: Chaotic Harmony Contemporary Korean Photography (2009); Louis Faurer (2002); This was the Photo League: compassion and the camera from the Depression to the Cold War (2001); Brassaï: the eye of Paris (1999); Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia (1986); Target III, in sequence: photographic sequences from the Target Collection of American Photography (1982) and her breakout work, The Woman's Eye (1973).
, Frances Benjamin Johnston
, Margaret Bourke-White
, Dorothea Lange
, Berenice Abbott
, Barbara Morgan
, Diane Arbus
, Alisa Wells, Judy Dater
and Bea Nettles
. Tucker states,
In a 2003 interview with Texas Monthly Magazine she comments:
Wilkes won the International Award of the Photographic Society of Japan
in 2005.
In 2001, Time magazine honored Tucker as "America's Best Curator".
She has also received: an Alumnae Achievement award from Randolph Macon Women's College; fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts
, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
, the Getty Center
, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France; and has consistently been voted one of the top fifty most influential people in America by the American Photo magazine.
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
of photographic works.
Tucker was born in Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge is the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is located in East Baton Rouge Parish and is the second-largest city in the state.Baton Rouge is a major industrial, petrochemical, medical, and research center of the American South...
. She received a B.A. in Art History from Randolph Macon Woman's College in 1967, and an A.A.S in Photographic Illustration from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1968. In 1972, she received an M.F.A in Photographic History from the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, studying under Nathan Lyons
Nathan Lyons
Nathan Lyons is an American artist and photographer who currently lives and works in New York. The artist's body of work consists primarily of photographs which focus on American culture...
and Beaumont Newhall
Beaumont Newhall
Beaumont Newhall was an influential curator, art historian, writer, and photographer. His The History of Photography remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photo history textbook...
.
Biography
While in graduate school, she worked as a Research Assistant at the George Eastman HouseGeorge Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...
in Rochester; as a Research Associate at the Gernsheim Collection at the University of Texas, Austin; and as a Curatorial Intern in the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York with a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts.
Tucker has worked for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston since 1976, when it possessed virtually no photographs. In February 1976, Target Stores, Inc. made its first donation to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) to begin the Target Collection of American Photography. The MFAH Photography department was established in December 1976, when Tucker was hired as a consultant to act as curator of photography. In 1978, she became the MFAH curator and in 1984 she was named the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography. Tucker has increased the museum's holdings of photographs to over 24,000 in 2008.
Tucker has organized more than forty exhibitions for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and elsewhere, including retrospectives for Brassaï
Brassaï
Brassaï was a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the World Wars...
, Robert Frank
Robert Frank
Robert Frank , born in Zürich, Switzerland, is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 photobook titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider's view of American...
, Louis Faurer
Louis Faurer
Louis Faurer was an American fashion photographer and a master of candid or street photography. A quiet artist who never achieved the broad public recognition of his best-known contemporaries, the significance and caliber of his work were lauded by insiders, among them Robert Frank, William...
, George Krause
George Krause
George Krause is an American artist photographer, now retired from the University of Houston where he established the photography department....
, Ray K. Metzker, and Richard Misrach
Richard Misrach
Richard Misrach is an American photographer known for his photographs of human intervention in landscapes. His works are represented in more than fifty major museum collections around the world....
; as well as surveys on Czech avant-garde photography, a survey of the history of Japanese photography, and a selection from the Allan Chasanoff Collection.
Many of these exhibitions have led to catalogues and monographic books, including: Chaotic Harmony Contemporary Korean Photography (2009); Louis Faurer (2002); This was the Photo League: compassion and the camera from the Depression to the Cold War (2001); Brassaï: the eye of Paris (1999); Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia (1986); Target III, in sequence: photographic sequences from the Target Collection of American Photography (1982) and her breakout work, The Woman's Eye (1973).
The Woman's Eye (1973)
The Woman's Eye features selections from the work of ten women photographers: Gertrude KäsebierGertrude Käsebier
Gertrude Käsebier was one of the most influential American photographers of the early 20th century. She was known for her evocative images of motherhood, her powerful portraits of Native Americans and her promotion of photography as a career for women.-Early life :Käsebier was born Gertrude...
, Frances Benjamin Johnston
Frances Benjamin Johnston
Frances "Fannie" Benjamin Johnston was one of the earliest American female photographers and photojournalists.- Life :...
, Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet Industry, the first female war correspondent and the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her...
, Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...
, Berenice Abbott
Berenice Abbott
Berenice Abbott , born Bernice Abbott, was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of New York City architecture and urban design of the 1930s.-Youth:...
, Barbara Morgan
Barbara Morgan
Barbara Radding Morgan is an American teacher and a former NASA astronaut. She participated in the Teacher in Space program as the backup to Christa McAuliffe for the ill-fated STS-51L mission of Space Shuttle Challenger. She then trained as a Mission Specialist, and flew on STS-118 in August 2007...
, Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
, Alisa Wells, Judy Dater
Judy Dater
Judy Dater is an American photographer and feminist. She is perhaps best known for her 1974 photograph, Imogen and Twinka, featuring an elderly Imogen Cunningham, one of America's first women photographers, encountering a nymph in the woods of Yosemite. The nymph is the model Twinka Thiebaud.Dater...
and Bea Nettles
Bea Nettles
-Career:Artist Bea Nettles is a pioneer in photographic techniques and book arts. She has been exhibiting and publishing her semi-autobiographical works since 1970. She taught photography and artists’ books from 1970-2007 at Rochester Institute of Technology, Tyler School of Art, and the University...
. Tucker states,
"The Woman's Eye represents the first major attempt to bring together notable photographs by women and to consider, through them, the role played by sexual identity both in the creation and the evaluation of photographic art."
In a 2003 interview with Texas Monthly Magazine she comments:
"When I wrote The Woman's Eye in 1973, very few women photographers were accepted in the elite of the field. That is no longer true. Photography has also had many important women as photo historians and curators. Nancy NewhallNancy NewhallNancy Wynne Newhall was an American photography critic. She is best known for writing the text to accompany photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but was also a widely published writer on photography, conservation, and American culture.Newhall was born Nancy Wynne in Lynn, Massachusetts,...
, Alison GernsheimHelmut GernsheimHelmut Erich Robert Kuno Gernsheim was a renowned historian of photography, collector, and photographer.-Biography:Born in Munich, Germany, Gernsheim studied art history at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich...
, Gisele Freund, and Grace Mayer were some of the important early women historians. I knew Nancy Newhall and Grace Mayer and admired both very much."
Awards and honors
In 2006, Tucker received a Focus Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Griffin Museum of Photography, given to individuals who have made critical contributions to the promotion of photography and whose ongoing commitment to photography has created far reaching impact.Wilkes won the International Award of the Photographic Society of Japan
Photographic Society of Japan
Since its inception, the Photographic Society of Japan has annually presented a large number of awards.-1952–1956:-1957–1984:-1985–1993:-1994–2003:-2004–2008:-2009–2010:...
in 2005.
In 2001, Time magazine honored Tucker as "America's Best Curator".
She has also received: an Alumnae Achievement award from Randolph Macon Women's College; fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
, the Getty Center
Getty Center
The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...
, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France; and has consistently been voted one of the top fifty most influential people in America by the American Photo magazine.
External links
- Lacayo, Richard. "The Exhibitionist". Time, 17 September 2001.
- Schwartz, Eileen. "Anne Wilkes Tucker: How the photography curator developed a world-class collection in Houston—and made time". Texas Monthly, January 2002. Requires payment.
- Varty, Nora. "A Q&A with Anne Wilkes Tucker". Texas Monthly, February 2003.