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Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception

February 20 – May 7, 2000
West Building, Main Floor, Galleries 72, 73, 76, 77, 78

Carleton E. Watkins, Piwac, Vernal Falls, 300 feet, Yosemite, 1861, albumen print from collodion negative mounted on paperboard, Gift of Mary and David Robinson, 1995.35.23

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: Approximately 80 photographs taken by Carleton Watkins in the Pacific Northwest from the late 1850s through the early 1890s were shown in this first major exhibition of the photographer's work in 20 years. Studies of Yosemite and of other natural areas were featured in the presentation, which included mammoth-plate photographs and panoramic and stereo-format prints.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, with special cooperation from the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California. Douglas Nickel, assistant curator of photographs, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Maria Morris Hambourg, curator of photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, selected the works. Sarah Greenough, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, coordinated the exhibition in Washington.

Sponsor: The Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities supported the exhibition. In-kind support was provided by SGI and StereoGraphics.

Attendance: 101,601

Catalog: Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception, by Douglas R. Nickel, with an introduction by Maria Morris Hambourg. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1999.

Other Venues: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 28–September 7, 1999
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 12, 1999–January 9, 2000

Watkins, Carleton E.
American, 1829 - 1916