Robert A. Sobieszek

Background

Robert A. Sobieszek was born on March 11, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

Education

In the 1980s Robert Sobieszek was a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, New York City, where he received a Master of Arts in Philosophy in the field of Art History. He earned a Master of Arts in the same major at Stanford University in 1969 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1965.

Career

In the 1980s the associate curator of nineteenth-century photography at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Robert Sobieszek joined Eastman House in 1968 to assist in the organization of its photographic collections. Prior to this, he had been an intern there in 1967. Robert Sobieszek has been responsible for numerous exhibitions, among them "British Masters of the Albumen Print," "The Spirit of Fact: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes," "Vedute della Camera: 19th-Century Views of Italy," and "An American Century of Photography, 1840-1940," among others.

From 1971 to 1977 Robert Sobieszek taught the history of photography in the Department of Fine Arts of the University of Rochester, and for the spring quarter of 1976, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Robert Sobieszek has lectured at the Center of the Eye in Aspen, Light Gallery in New York, the Oakland Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cooper Union in New York, Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Indianapolis Museum of Art, the University of New Mexico and the State University of New York, Purchase. Robert Sobieszek has also been chairman of several symposiums and conferences on photography. His articles appear abundantly in Image magazine.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "He was one of the signally great photography curators of his generation," said Earl A. "Rusty" Powell, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, who hired Sobieszek when Powell was LACMA's director. "In connoisseurship, collecting and exhibitions, he was at the front of the field."

Connections

teacher:

Aaron Siskind

From 1961 to 1963 Robert Sobieszek studied under Aaron Siskind at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design, specializing in visual design and photography.