'EVERYDAY PEOPLE' LAUNCHES MENIL’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR

Written by Steven Islas Thursday, 04 November 2010 20:36

HOUSTON, TX - Although The Menil Collection counts more than 3,500 photographs, including important portfolios by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans, among its diverse holdings, the museum’s photographic collection has long remained one of its lesser-known components. Beginning January 26 until April 29, Everyday People: 20th-Century Photography from The Menil Collection will shine new light on this rarely seen part of the collection.

“Acquired largely since the late 1960s, photography is a latecomer to and a departure from the majority of the Menil’s holdings in modern art,” said Franklin Sirmans, the Menil’s curator of modern and contemporary art.  “While John and Dominique de Menil sought out Surrealism and abstraction in painting and sculpture, they were attracted to photography primarily for its realism and sense of immediacy.”

Works by Cartier-Bresson and Evans – two of the most renowned photographers of the 20th century – figure prominently in the Menil’s photography collection and in the forthcoming exhibition.  Cartier-Bresson spent two years reviewing thousands of contact sheets produced between 1929 and 1974 to handpick a photographic archive for the de Menils’ foundation.  The museum’s founding director, Walter Hopps, combed Evans’s archives to select images for the permanent collection.

The exhibition’s selection of Evans’s and Cartier-Bresson’s work situates their figural photography in dialogue with images by a diverse array of artists, including James Van Der Zee and Brassaï.  The artists on view range from the well known to the relatively obscure, reflecting the eclectic and egalitarian nature of the de Menils’ interests and passions.  For example, Emil Cadoo captured urban street life; Eve Arnold focused on poignant interior scenes; and Danny Lyon documented disenfranchised communities, from prisoners in Texas to abandoned children in Colombia. 

Everyday People draws from the tradition of Edward Steichen’s landmark MoMA exhibition (1955-1956), The Family of Man, which traveled to Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum (CAM), then under the leadership of Jermayne McAgy, the pioneering curator recruited by the de Menils.  “While Steichen celebrated humanity’s oneness, the de Menils often were more interested in the disparities among us caused by race, economics and geography,” Sirmans said.  “For this reason, although the individuals represented in the Menil photography collection span many ethnicities, classes, and ages, the collection’s tone is shaped by an overarching concern for disadvantaged and vanishing communities.”

 Sirmans, who joined the Menil in September, is best known to Houston audiences for his work as co-curator of Basquiat (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2005).

Everyday People is both Sirmans’s first Menil show and the inaugural exhibition of The Menil Collection’s year-long celebration of its 20th anniversary.

Visit The Menil Collection, located within Houston’s Museum District, www.menil.org