Traveling
Exhibitions

• Art Beyond Isms: Masterworks from El Greco to Picasso in The Phillips Collection
• Margaret Bourke-White The Photography of Design, 1927-1936

Exhibition Venues

Guided by the vision of its founder, Duncan Phillips, to bring people together with great works of art, The Phillips Collection is preparing to undergo an expansion that will add gallery space, improved visitor services, and a Center for Studies in Modern Art. Rather than remove its European Masterworks from public view during this time, The Phillips Collection is sharing them with audiences across the country. A traveling exhibition of 50 of these great works of art, including the beloved Luncheon of the Boating Party, is touring to six American museums and one European venue, and is already enjoying great success and critical acclaim. While the Goh annex is under construction, the main Phillips house will remain open, presenting a series of special exhibitions and selections from its permanent collection. The Phillips Collection organizes numerous traveling exhibitions that expand scholarship and, combined with an active lending program, make its works available to audiences throughout the world. The Phillips Collection is a privately supported, non-government institution.

Art Beyond Isms: Masterworks from El Greco to Picasso in The Phillips Collection

Exhibition Venues

Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971) New Deal, Montana: Fort Peck Dam, Diversion Tunnel, 1936 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of the Margaret Bourke-White Collection, Syracuse University Library, Department of Special Collections. ©Margaret Bourke-White/TimePix

Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design, 1927-1936 examines for the first time the works produced in the first decade of this preeminent photographer’s career.

Born in New York in 1904, Margaret Bourke-White grew up fearless and ambitious. Her father, an engineer, inventor, and amateur photographer, introduced her to the world of machines and to photography. He took her to visit a foundry, at the age of eight, where she saw molten iron for the first time. She also helped him develop photographs in the bathtub of their home. These were formative experiences.

Like so many other artists of the period, she learned a great deal about design and abstraction from Arthur Wesley Dow’s theories of composition. In Bourke-White’s case, the conduit from Dow was through Clarence H. White, one of the great photographers of the period, whose class she took in the spring of 1922, as a freshman at Columbia University.

After graduating from college in 1927, Bourke-White moved to Cleveland, where she hoped to make her living as an architectural photographer. Very quickly her services were in great demand. For substantial fees, she photographed the lavish houses commissioned by Cleveland’s industrial magnates. However, she saw herself as an artist and wanted to create more significant photographs. To fulfill her dream, Bourke-White roamed the industrial flatlands of Cleveland and took photographs. The new twenty-eight-story Terminal Tower rose above the city and became the focus of many of her photographs. Before long she was hired as the official photographer for the owners of the prestigious building, which helped make her well-known in Cleveland.

Her rising prominence helped her to gain access to the guarded and gated interior of Otis Steel Company.

Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971) Pan American Airways: Sikorsky S-42, Propellors , ca. 1934 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of the Margaret Bourke-White Collection, Syracuse University Library, Department of Special Collections. ©Margaret Bourke-White/TimePix

The president of the company doubted that the mill was a place to find art but agreed to allow Bourke-White to photograph the blast furnaces. Unfortunately, this was a more difficult task than she ever thought it would be. With these photographs, Bourke-White was the first to capture the visual intensity of the steel industry and won her first prize at the Cleveland Museum of Art show in 1928.

The success of these early industrial images led to many other corporate commissions and to an offer from Henry Luce in 1929 to be the first photographer for his new magazine, Fortune. In the first issue, she had three photo spreads and was the only photographer who was given credit in the table of contents. Soon her dramatic photographs became the trademark of Fortune. Although she did not invent industrial photography, she set the standard for years to come.

In the winter of 1929-30, one of her assignments was to photograph the construction of the Chrysler Building in New York. Falling in love with the building, she closed her studio in Cleveland and opened one in the Chrysler Building with a terrace view next to the gargoyles. This move to New York coincided well with her job at Fortune, which was based there.

Her photo assignments also took her to foreign countries. In June 1930 she embarked on a trip to Germany to photograph their major industries. After Germany she proposed traveling to the Soviet Union to photograph their rapid industrialization. The editors at Fortune were skeptical, because the Soviet Union had not allowed any foreigner to photograph industrial sites. In typical fashion, Bourke-White was unrelenting. She finally got her visa in Berlin and set out on the first of several trips to the Soviet Union. In Moscow her work was so admired that she was made a guest of the government with all expenses paid. She photographed the factories around Moscow and traveled around the country. When she returned to the United States, Bourke-White included these images in Eyes on Russia, which was published in 1931.

	Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971) Campbell Soup: Peeling Onions, 1935, Gelatin silver print; Courtesy of the Margaret Bourke-White Collection, Syracuse University Library, Department of Special Collections. © Margaret Bourke-White/TimePix

Bourke-White’s photographs for Fortune and her book on the Soviet Union made her a celebrated photographer in the United States. The fact that she was a woman certainly added to her fascination. Her every move became newsworthy, and she provided a role model for women. Unfortunately, her fame did not translate into added income. By this time the economic downturn of the Depression was taking hold. In 1933 she was forced to move out of her studio in the Chrysler Building and into less expensive space on Fifth Avenue.

To supplement her salary from Fortune, Bourke-White continued to search for extra ways to generate income. For a few years, she tried color photography in an attempt to win new advertising assignments, but she had little interest in mastering the difficult technique involved, and she gave up after a couple of years. She also accepted several assignments to produce mural-size photographs, which culminated in 1933 when NBC hired her to create the biggest photographic mural in America for the rotunda of their studios in Rockefeller Center. In 1935 she began taking aerial photographs for several airlines, which gave her skills that she used on many of her future photographic assignments.

Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design, 1927-1936 was organized by The Phillips Collection. This exhibition is supported by the Phillips Contemporaries. Additional support is provided by Trellis Fund. It features over 150 vintage photographs by Bourke-White, as well as archival materials from the period and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. After closing at the Phillips Collection, the exhibition will travel to venues across the United States.

Margaret Bourke-White The Photography of Design, 1927-1936