Peeking at Exhibitions

Charting Exhibitions as documented in the Photography Database

Compiled by Greg Drake, Andrew Eskind

The charts below compare the exhibition histories of 2 current photography exhibitions - one in Budapest scheduled to travel to Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the Fall 2024, then to George Eastman Museum in 2024. The other at New York Public Library thru July 2024.

Noteworthy: All of the "Hungarian/American" photographers are deceased. Most of them had exhibition histories both in their lifetimes as well as continuing posthumously.

Note also that most of the 46 "Arctic" photographers are young - for many, this is the first museum exhibit known to photographydatabase.org. For the handful of nineteenth-century photographers, this posthumous exhibit is the first (that we know of) in many years though some of them did exhibit in their lifetimes. Hover over the circles for additional information. Both of these charts are ranked from the earliest exhibiting photographer to the most recent.

The next chart from a 1982 exhibit at Yale University Art Gallery illustrates a fairly unusual pattern - namely, a lengthy quiescent period between the 19th century active era for

this group of "naturalistic" photographers in Philadelphia and the reappearance in museum exhibits in the 1970s and continuing. This isn't just wartime - rather, forgotten for a full 60 years.

Magnum, Paris prepared this exhibit - 50 photographers covering cinema on the occasion of their 50th Anniversary in 1997. A smaller version - roughly half as large - also focused on cinema was circulated by Curatorial Assistance for several years beginning in 2000.

Family of Man - Steichen and Wayne Miller's 1955 exhibit at MOMA (and extensively toured in both the US and Europe for several years thereafter). Note the significant number of first-time exhibitors among the over 260 photographers as well as a few photographers seemingly never heard from again and others whose exhibitions histories appear to have been launched by this most famous of all photography exhibits including its best-selling catalog.

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