Background
Nancy Newhall was born on May 9, 1908 in Lynn, Massachusetts, United States.
Nancy Newhall was born on May 9, 1908 in Lynn, Massachusetts, United States.
Newhall studied drawing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1920) and graduated from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts (1930), having studied creative writing, drama and painting. She then went to New York to study painting and engraving at the Art Students League. In 1936 she studied in the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London.
Newhall served as acting curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City while her husband was in the air corps (1942-45). She later served as a consultant on exhibitions and publications for George Eastman House in Rochester, and in 1967 was associate curator for the Exchange National Bank of Chicago Collection.
In 1967 she was a founding member of Friends of Photography in Carmel, California, and served as trustee.
She was married to Beaumont Newhall.