A Curator's Eye: The Visual Legacy of Robert A. Sobieszek
42 records
May 11 - August 20, 2006
"I'm less interested in photography than in artists who use photography."
(Robert A. Sobieszek, 1992)
From 1990 until his untimely death in 2005, Robert A. Sobieszek was senior curator and head of the Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. During his tenure, he shepherded the permanent collection of photographs with the highly refined visual understanding of a historian, the intellectual rigor and sophistication of an academic, and the critical eye and sensitivity of a connoisseur. Under his stewardship the collection grew from fifteen hundred works to its current size of more than eight thousand objects. While Sobieszek’s exuberance and passion for photographers, photographs, and visual culture informed the conceptual depth of his writing and the infectious enthusiasm of his lectures, it is most clearly evident in the internationalized understanding and consummate taste that drove his acquisitions. A Curator’s Eye: The Visual Legacy of Robert A. Sobieszek celebrates his remarkably comprehensive and sophisticated visual sensibility.
This exhibition features pivotal works acquired by Sobieszek that have substantially shaped the direction and strengths of the permanent collection. Encompassing works of important historical significance by acknowledged masters of the medium, as well as those by contemporary artists, this exhibition imparts a sense of the collection’s character—one that is as elegantly complex as the curator under whose guidance it was shaped.
The late curator Robert A. Sobieszek expanded LACMA's photography collection by more than 6,000 works. Here, in his memory, are 39 of them.
"I'm less interested in photography than in artists who use photography."
(Robert A. Sobieszek, 1992)
From 1990 until his untimely death in 2005, Robert A. Sobieszek was senior curator and head of the Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. During his tenure, he shepherded the permanent collection of photographs with the highly refined visual understanding of a historian, the intellectual rigor and sophistication of an academic, and the critical eye and sensitivity of a connoisseur. Under his stewardship the collection grew from fifteen hundred works to its current size of more than eight thousand objects. While Sobieszek’s exuberance and passion for photographers, photographs, and visual culture informed the conceptual depth of his writing and the infectious enthusiasm of his lectures, it is most clearly evident in the internationalized understanding and consummate taste that drove his acquisitions. A Curator’s Eye: The Visual Legacy of Robert A. Sobieszek celebrates his remarkably comprehensive and sophisticated visual sensibility.
This exhibition features pivotal works acquired by Sobieszek that have substantially shaped the direction and strengths of the permanent collection. Encompassing works of important historical significance by acknowledged masters of the medium, as well as those by contemporary artists, this exhibition imparts a sense of the collection’s character—one that is as elegantly complex as the curator under whose guidance it was shaped.
The late curator Robert A. Sobieszek expanded LACMA's photography collection by more than 6,000 works. Here, in his memory, are 39 of them.
