Biographical / Historical Note
Beaumont Newhall is perhaps the first champion of the study of photography as art, and of
its history. He was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1908 and graduated from Harvard
University in 1932. After an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Newhall became
the Librarian at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1937, at the request of Director Alfred Barr,
Newhall organized the museum's first exhibition of photographs. His History of
Photography, published for the exhibition, introduced formal criteria for judging
photography as a fine art. Revised five times and translated into several languages, it
remains a widely read textbook on the history of photography.
In 1940 Beaumont Newhall became the first Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern
Art. He was drafted in 1942 and sent to North Africa and Italy in a photo-reconnaissance
division. In his absence Nancy Newhall, whom he had married in 1936, served as Acting
Curator. Beaumont Newhall resumed his Curatorship after the war, but resigned in 1945 over
artistic differences with the new director, Edward Steichen.
In 1948, Beaumont Newhall became the first Curator of Photography at the George Eastman
House, and then served as its Director from 1958 to 1971, building a significant photography
collection. After his retirement, Newhall accepted a position as Visiting Professor of Art
at the University of New Mexico, where he helped to establish the first doctoral program in
the history of photography at an American university. He died in 1993.
In his long career, Beaumont Newhall authored numerous articles and reviews of books about
photography. In addition to History of Photography, he wrote Masters
of Photography (with Nancy Newhall, 1958), The daguerreotype in
America (1961), Frederick Evans (1964), Latent image: the
discovery of photography (1967) and Focus: memoirs of a life in
photography (1993). He also published a book of photographs, In plain
sight: the photographs of Beaumont Newhall (1983)
Nancy Newhall (Nancy Wynne Parker) was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1908. She graduated
from Smith College, where she showed talent as a writer and painter, and married Beaumont
Newhall in 1936. After serving as Acting Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art
(1942-45), she wrote articles about photographers, edited and introduced photography books
by Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and others, and collaborated with Ansel Adams on
several books about the American West, including Yosemite Valley (1959),
Death Valley (1954), The Tetons and Yellowstone (1970), and
This is the American Earth (1960). With Minor White, she founded the
magazine Aperture. She died in 1974, struck by a falling tree while rafting
down the Snake River with Beaumont.
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