Not to Be Missed!
Join one of our Gallery Guides to explore Coming into Focus: A Snapshot of Photography at the Nasher. Spanning photography that entered the Nasher collection from 1972 to today, this exhibition showcases people, places and things that were captured on a variety of methods as photographic technology evolved and blurred the lines between art and science.
The museum’s photography collection originated in 1972, when Duke University Museum of Art purchased a portrait of artist Barbara S. Thompson by noted North Carolina photographer and educator John Menapace. Twenty years later, Duke University purchased its second photograph: Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #140, depicting a human-pig hybrid creature and part of the celebrated artist’s portrayal of female characters in classic fairy tales. The opening of the Nasher Museum in 2005 initiated a more focused approach to collecting photography building upon these two earlier acquisitions. Within its first decade, the museum acquired significant groups of works by Andy Warhol, Barkley L. Hendricks, and Mike Disfarmer, among many others, as it built a robust collection of national, international, and regional photography.
More recently the Nasher has added over 2,000 photographs to its collection that allow us, for the first time, to chronicle a broad historical sweep of the medium from its dawn in the 1830s and 40s to more recent innovative, experimental approaches. A five-year donation of over 1,500 photographs by Linda and Charles Googe (A.B. ’84) has more than doubled the museum’s photography holdings and included works by the best-known practitioners from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Edouard Baldus, Ilse Bing, Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Arthur Rothstein, Nadar, and Edward Weston. Coming into Focus: A Snapshot of Photography at the Nasher celebrates these gifts and other acquisitions, highlighting a sampling of gems and illuminating a bright future of continued collecting and presenting of photography in innovative and ambitious ways.
Coming into Focus: A Snapshot of Photography at the Nasher was organized by Ellen C. Raimond, Associate Curator of Academic Initiatives and Marshall N. Price, Chief Curator and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art., with assistance from Nasher interns, Charles Blocksidge, III (’25) and Jordan Moyd (Robertson Scholar ’26, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and Ghita Basurto-Covarrubias (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, ‘26).
This exhibition is made possible by The Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family Fund for Exhibitions; the Frank Edward Hanscom Endowment; the Janine and J. Tomilson Hill Family; the Neely Family Fund; the E.T. Rollins Jr. and Frances P. Rollins Fund; the J. Horst and Ruth Mary Meyer Fund; and the K. Brantley and Maxine E. Watson Endowment Fund.
Ken Heyman, Roy Lichtenstein in mirror reflections, 1964 (printed later). Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches (40.64 x 50.8 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC. Gift of Charles and Linda Googe, 2019.17.165. © Ken Heyman Estate.
