Dear friends and colleagues,
It is my profound honor and joy to tell you that the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC has acquired my archive. The NGA will safeguard and make available for study some 1261 prints representing my work over the past fifty years. As an artist, I have made a lifelong investigation of American culture and the American landscape; I cannot imagine a better home for my work than our nation’s museum. Aside from a shared inquiry into what it means to be American, there are two facts I love about the NGA cited by the collector Dorothy Vogel, who, with her husband Herbert, donated thousands of artworks to the museum. She liked that the NGA “didn’t charge admission” and that “once you give them something, they will not sell it.”
My infinite gratitude goes to the entire NGA photography department for its unmatched professionalism and warmth. In particular, my thanks to Sarah Greenough and Diane Waggoner. A visionary historian of photography, Sarah recently retired from the department she founded in 1990. She championed this acquisition. Diane, an extraordinarily incisive and collaborative curator, made the complex process of editing, producing, transporting, and cataloguing the archive run smoothly. Thanks as well to Kaywin Feldman, director of the NGA, for her critical stewardship.
In this brutal and uncertain period, it is reassuring to work with people devoted to art, which is to say, humanity.
Mitch