Background
Beaumont Newhall was born on June 22, 1908, in Lynn, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Herbert William and Alice Lillia (Davis).
Harvard University
University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne
Somerset House in the Strand, home of the Institute and Gallery
Ansel Adams and Beaumont Newhall in Barbara Morgan's Studio
(The History of Photography remains one of the most signif...)
The History of Photography remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photographic history textbook.
https://www.amazon.com/History-Photography-1839-Present/dp/0870703811/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Beaumont+Newhall&qid=1595594621&sr=8-1
Beaumont Newhall was born on June 22, 1908, in Lynn, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Herbert William and Alice Lillia (Davis).
Although Beaumont Newhall wanted to study film and photography in college, the subjects were not being taught as separate disciplines when he enrolled at Harvard University. Instead, he chose to study art history and museum studies. While at Harvard, Newhall was greatly influenced by his instructor Paul J. Sachs. In 1932, after receiving his master's degree from Harvard. Sachs helped Beaumont Newhall obtain a position as lecturer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia.
Beaumont Newhall continued his graduate studies at the Institute of Art and Archaeology of the University of Paris, and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He worked briefly for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Massachusetts branch of the Public Works Administration. Because of financial difficulties during the Depression, Beaumont Newhall was not able to devote himself to his doctoral studies, and eventually accepted a position at the Museum of Modern Art as a stable source of income.
Newhall's career at the Museum of Modern Art began in 1935 when he became its librarian. In 1937, he was invited by Alfred Barr Jr., the director of MoMA, to develop the first comprehensive retrospective of photographic works. The exhibition that Beaumont Newhall mounted was pivotal in securing photography's place within the arts. Its accompanying catalog, The History of Photography, was the first account of the first 100 years of photographic history that gave equal credit to its technical virtues, as well as its value as an art form. The show toured 10 other American Museums and the catalogue long outlived the exhibition to become a significant resource.
In 1940, Beaumont Newhall became the first curator of MoMA's photography department and decisively began collecting for the Museum, starting with the work of László Moholy-Nagy. He was posted to Italy and North Africa as a photo-interpreter of aerials taken over enemy territory, and then returned to America to train others.
In 1946 Beaumont Newhall was invited by Josef Albers to conduct give lectures on photography history at Black Mountain College. He resigned from the Museum in 1947 after he found that Edward Steichen was to direct the Photography Department over him, while he was to be a curator. Nevertheless, he accepted a request to contribute an introduction to the MoMA exhibition catalog for Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Throughout his career, Beaumont Newhall taught the history of photography and photography at institutions including the University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies in Austria.
In his late career after retiring from the George Eastman Museum, he was appointed professor at the University of New Mexico in 1972 and named Professor Emeritus in 1984.
Beaumont Newhall died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on February 26, 1993.
(The History of Photography remains one of the most signif...)
Beaumont Newhall married Nancy Wynne, a notable photography critic who worked in his place as a curator at MoMA during his service in World War II, in which his rank was First Lieutenant.