In Appreciation: Gifts in Honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker June 23–October 11, 2015
Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, promised gift of Karen Kelsey Duddlesten in honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker on the occasion of her retirement. © The Richard Avedon Foundation
Man Ray, Untitled (Photomontage Portrait of a Young Man), c. 1926, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Manfred Heiting in honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker on the occasion of her retirement. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris
Collectors, artists, and gallerists from around the country are donating more than 150 works to the Museum in honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker’s 39-year tenure as curator of photography.
In Appreciation: Gifts in Honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker features a selection of these photographs. Among the highlights are Richard Avedon’s 1955 Dovima with Elephants; Nan Goldin’s multimedia Ballad of Sexual Dependency from the 1980s; a unique Man Ray photomontage from about 1926; a photograph by the medium’s inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot, from 1840—now the earliest firmly dated photograph in the MFAH collection; and a luminous 1949 nighttime view of the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris, by Brassaï.
Other notable images include Gilbert and George's 45-panel Base from 2005; Harlem street scenes and portraits by Dawoud Bey from the 1980s; and photographs by Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Josef Koudelka, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ray Metzker, and Irving Penn.
Hired in 1976 to establish a department of photography at the MFAH, Tucker arrived to a collection of only 141 images. Her passion led to path-breaking exhibitions and publications that made the MFAH a leader in the field. Today, the collection stands at more than 30,000 works by some 4,000 artists, created on all seven continents. Tucker has organized or co-organized more than 40 exhibitions, authored dozens of publications, and acquired the work of many leading 20th- and 21st-century photographers. She retires on June 30, 2015.