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Taking Place: Photographs
from the Prentice and Paul Sack Collection
June 2 - September 6, 2005
The San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present Taking Place: Photographs
from the Prentice and Paul Sack 
Collection June 2 through September 6, 2005. Drawn from the Prentice and
Paul Sack Photographic Trust at SFMOMA as well as a newly promised gift
from the Sacks to the Trust, this extraordinary photography exhibition is
one of the largest ever mounted at SFMOMA, celebrating an unparalleled collection
that spans the history of the medium from 1840 to the mid-1970s.
(right: Walker Evans, South Street, New York City; 1934; Collection
of the Prentice and Paul Sack Photographic Trust; © Walker Evans Archive,
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
The pictures on view are loosely united around the theme
of architecture. Paul Sack, a real estate investor, assembled his collection
using the criterion that each photograph depict a building that ostensibly
could be bought or leased. What seems a simple pretext immediately proves
much more complex in Taking Place. On its own, each image reflects
a powerful and distinctive sense of place.
As a group, the pictures lend to our understanding of photography's
complex role in articulating how the human hand has shaped the natural landscape,
as well as how the built environment has shaped our perception of ourselves.
The powerful evocation of place generated by each of these pictures results
from their distinctive physical locales as well as from the diverse art-making
ideologies and practices of the photographers. A number of the pictures
evidence the romantic nostalgia for the pre-industrial landscape, while
others embody the modernist admiration for the sleek, functional forms of
the industrial age. Montage is used to evoke the frenetic pace of the modern
metropolis, while portraiture and street photography explore the ways in
which our more immediate, intimate surroundings affect the way we live or
reflect societal ideals.
A truly momentous project, Taking Place, which presents
nearly three hundred of the Sacks' most significant pictures and spans the
history of the medium from 1840 to the mid-1970s, is the fruit of the longtime
friendship between Paul Sack and Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography,
SFMOMA. The exhibition was co-organized by Phillips and Corey Keller, assistant
curator of photography.
This ambitious exhibition will highlight the collection's
very important nineteenth-century holdings, including masterpieces by photographic
pioneers such as William Henry Fox Talbot's Paris (1843). A highlight
of the exhibition is Eadweard Muybridge's spectacular 1878 panorama, taken
from the mansion of railroad baron Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill. Comprised of
thirteen mammoth-plate albumen prints, the panorama is nearly twenty feet
long, offering a sweeping view of old San Francisco. Other nineteenth-century
photographers represented in depth include Edouard Baldus, Julia Margaret
Cameron, and Francis Frith. Sack also has amassed an especially rich collection
of photographs by Eugène Atget, whose work will be well represented
in the exhibition.
The collection's twentieth-century holdings are equally
impressive: Standouts in Taking Place include photographs by Walker
Evans, whose 
South Street, New
York City (1934) was the first photograph in Mr.
Sack's collection, as well as other key works of American modernism by Charles
Sheeler, Margaret Bourke-White, and Imogen Cunningham. The exhibition will
also include important experimental photographs by such members of the European
avant-garde as László Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Rodchenko, and
Umbo (Otto Umbehr). Other twentieth-century photographers represented include
Robert Adams, Robert Frank, William Klein, Helen Levitt, Ray Metzker, and
Bill Owens. (left: William Henry Fox Talbot, Paris, 1843;
Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, fractional gift of
Prentice and Paul Sack, and collection of the Prentice and Paul Sack Photographic
Trust)
Says Phillips, "It has been a distinct pleasure to
work with Paul over the past sixteen years, to watch his collection grow
and take shape, and to witness his irrepressible enthusiasm for the medium.
We are very happy to have this opportunity to not only celebrate Paul's
remarkable collection, but also honor his long-standing and generous support
of SFMOMA and the wider Bay Area photographic community."
Not long after his retirement in 1992, Paul Sack spearheaded
the organization of the SFMOMA's photography accessions subcommittee and
became its first chairman. In 1996 Sack moved his business to a space in
the 49 Geary Street building, among many of San Francisco's art galleries
and near SFMOMA's new home on Third Street. This close proximity presented
an opportunity for Sack to continue working closely with the Museum. In
1998 Sack originated an innovative trust arrangement with SFMOMA that put
his pictures in the joint custody of him and the Museum. Sack, Phillips,
and SFMOMA's director are the trustees, and the collection is at the Museum's
disposal for exhibition, study, publishing, and lending. The Trust dramatically
transformed SFMOMA's holdings, allowing the Museum to fulfill its ambition
to represent the entire history of photography and ensuring that a high
quality and broad range of pictures can be presented to the public. SFMOMA
has just announced a new promised gift of 800 additional photographs to
the Prentice and Paul Sack Photographic Trust at SFMOMA. This group of important
photographs joins their 1998 gift of nearly one thousand photographs.
Since its founding in 1935, SFMOMA has been committed to
building a photography collection of international stature, giving it the
distinction of being one of the first American museums to recognize photography
as a legitimate art form. With the advice and support of renowned Bay Area
photographer Ansel Adams and a host of local practitioners and patrons,
the Museum's commitment to the medium has grown steadily over the decades,
gaining momentum with the appointment of the first dedicated curator of
photography in 1958 and the 
establishment
of the Department of Photography in 1980. Through the creation of the Prentice
and Paul Sack Photographic Trust at SFMOMA, the Museum's collection now
encompasses nearly fifteen thousand photographs spanning the history of
the medium, from its first invention in the mid-nineteenth century to the
present day.
Taking Place: Photographs from the Prentice and Paul
Sack Collection is accompanied by a richly illustrated
224-page catalogue, published by SFMOMA, with essays by curator Phillips,
cultural historian Alan Trachtenberg, Corey Keller, and Douglas R. Nickel,
director of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. (right:
Berenice Abbott, American, 18981991, Flam and Flam, New York City,1936,
Gelatin silver print, 9 9/16 x 7 5/8 in. (24.3 x 19.4 cm). Collection of
Prentice and Paul Sack)
SFMOMA will present the opening day program Taking Place:
A Collector's Point of View on Thursday, June 2, at 7 p.m. in the Museum's
Phyllis Wattis Theater. One of the foremost photography collections in the
United States, the Prentice and Paul Sack collection is unique in its focus
on the built environment. In this opening program, catalogue contributors
Alan Trachtenberg, professor emeritus of English and American studies at
Yale University, and Douglas R. Nickel talk with Paul Sack about the evolution
of his collection and explore the complex notions of place it evokes. Additional
program information is available on the Museum's Web site at www.sfmoma.org.
Taking Place: Photographs from the Prentice and Paul
Sack Collection is organized by SFMOMA. This exhibition
is sponsored by Deutsche Bank and RREEF. Additional support is provided
by Elaine McKeon, Nancy and Steven Oliver, Jane and Jack Bogart, and the
George Frederick Jewett Foundation.
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