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Catherine Coleman, Photography Curator, Reina Sofía Museum |
A few decades ago, in most museums there was no such thing as a photography curator. Just five years ago, Catherine Coleman was a curator of prints, drawings, and photographs – in that order. Now, as Photography Curator for Spain’s national contemporary art museum, The Reina Sofía, Coleman dedicates all her time to photography and finds she has so much work to do in photography alone that she needs more time to do it.
Coleman holds a B.A. degree in art history from Wells College in New York and earned her Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Madrid’s Complutense University. Before working at the Reina Sofía, Coleman was a research assistant at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, and Prints and Drawings Curator for the National Library of Spain. Apogee contributor Ysabel de la Rosa interviewed Coleman in her museum office--surrounded by tall, white print files filled with works by some of photography’s most outstanding figures (i.e. Man Ray, Robert Capa, José Ortiz Echagüe, and Dora Maar).
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YDL: How does your typical work day begin?
CC: Usually with correspondence. I start by checking my e-mail, which is a mixed blessing! It helps me communicate better with other countries, but it gives me less time to reflect and make decisions, because people expect immediate responses. I usually have a lot of written correspondence pending, as well. If it’s in English, I do it myself, but my secretary helps with letters in Spanish. And, this job requires a lot of permission-getting. I have to write internal memos for every expense for each exhibit, for example.
YDL: How does the museum decide which photographs to buy for its
collection?
CC: The acquisition process always involves research, recommendations, and multiple levels of approval.
YDL: So, it’s not like a gallery, where a photographer shows you his or her portfolio or sends you a sample of work?
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Adam
Lubroth, Bichromate Print, Reina Sofía Photography Collection |
CC: Oh, NO!(She throws up her hands and smiles.) I NEVER want unsolicited work, not even a donation. If I invite a photographer to make a donation or send me work to review, that’s fine, but if we accepted unsolicited inquiries, we’d be over-run. We need to initiate the search for photographs because a museum has specific goals for its collection. I’ll give you an example. I recently attended Primavera Fotográfica in Barcelona where I met Peruvian photographer Miguel Coquis. His black-and-white work of self-portrait themes is strong and combines staged photography and digital manipulation. But, aside from the quality of his work, I’m interested in Coquis because he’s a Latin American photographer, and one of our goals is to obtain more work by Spanish and Latin American photographers. I asked Miguel to send me more information on his work. I’ll study it and then make an acquisition request to the museum directors if I think his work will fill a gap in our collection.
Our very first purchase was a photography by Adam Lubroth, an American photographer who lives in Madrid and has dual nationality. He is one of the few photographers in Spain doing gum-bichromate printing, and we needed to have that process represented in our collection. The quality of the artistic message always comes first, but our job is to establish a collection that expresses all facets of photography, its history, techniques, and subject matter.
YDL: When you decide you want a particular photograph, what do you do to
obtain it?
CC: I’m only the first wheel in the process. I research the work (or series of works), keeping in mind the history of the photographer, the printing techniques used, the photographer’s place of origin, the work’s physical condition, and of course, the proposed price. I depend a lot on networking with fellow curators in the U.S. and Europe. I frequently discuss pricing with them. (Speaking of pricing, it’s customary for photographers to offer museums a thirty percent discount.) Then, I make a report on the work and send it to the museum directors. If they approve, they send the acquisition request to the museum trustees. Once the trustees approve, they send the request to Spain’s Ministry of Culture. There, a governmental board, the "Junta de Calificación" will make final approval on the purchase. Then--and only then--do we acquire the photograph.
YDL: What’s your annual acquisition budget?
CC: We don’t have a set annual budget for photography, although we do purchase photography every year. In some museums, photography curators are responsible for raising funds to make acquisitions. That’s really tough, but worldwide, photography still doesn’t have budget allocations equal to other media.
YDL: What happens to a photograph when it arrives at the museum?
CC: Oddly enough, I’m not the first person to see it. First, it goes to the basement where Security registers it. Security then takes it to one of our restorers. The restorer examines the work and writes a report, describing the work, its condition, etc. If it comes to us in a frame, the restorer takes off the frame, so that our staff photographer can take a picture of the picture. In effect, we create a passport for each photograph, placing an identification photo and basic facts on each work in a plastic sleeve. Where the picture goes from there depends on its size. Anything less than 90 x 140 centimeters comes into our office upstairs. We keep all works flat, filed alphabetically by artist in our print files. We put an archival white mat on the photograph (in museum lingo, it’s called a "passe-partout") and then put the photo in a Mylar sleeve to protect it from finger printing, etc.
If the work is too large for our print drawers, then it stays in the basement where we keep works mounted on hanging screens. We keep more and more works downstairs, because photographers are doing more large prints.
YDL: If you could buy anything you like for the Reina Sofía’s
Photography Collection, what would it be?
CC: I’d buy more documentary photography. I’d like to have work by Horacio Sánchez, James Nachtwey, and Javier Balutz, who won a Pulitzer for his work in Palestine. I’d also buy international photography done before 1945. Naturally, I would buy significant photographs taken in Spain and work by all the top-quality Spanish and Latin American photographers I could. Spain’s talented photographers still don’t get much international exposure. It’s important for our museum to recognize and support them.
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Robert Capa, Barcelona, August 1936 |
YDL: What’s one of your most noteworthy acquisitions?
CC: The first one that comes to mind is the Man Ray photograph the museum purchased in 1998. It’s a portrait of the Spanish dancer Vicente Escudero, and we paid $5600 for it. The photos of Picasso at work on Guernica taken by Dora Maar are another important acquisition. I’d also have to say that acquiring Robert Capa’s photographs of the Spanish Civil War was a tremendous experience. These were donated by Capa’s brother in New York.
YDL: How important is originality?
CC: Very important. It’s always a priority to buy works printed by the photographer, especially when we’re dealing with photographers who are no longer alive. And, I try to get as close to the original epoch of the photo as I can. I’ll show you an example:
Here are two Man Ray prints (a photo of Picasso at a ball accompanied by his girlfriend Olga and an unidentified woman). The first one was printed by Man Ray in 1927. The second was printed in 1982 after Man Ray’s death by his assistant Lucien Treillard. The difference is obvious. Man Ray’s print is softer in tone, more atmospheric, and is printed on a paper that doesn’t exist today. Treillard’s print is in gray tones, rather than sepia, and emphasizes clarity more than atmosphere. I think the women are prettier in Man Ray’s original.
We have forty of Treillard’s prints in our collection for study purposes, but we would exhibit only the print executed by Man Ray. You have to take into account that photographers take their pictures with printing materials in mind. This influences the work, naturally. Man Ray knew what paper he would use, for example, and couldn’t possibly have planned his image for paper manufactured sixty years later.
YDL: What about photographers who don’t do their own printing?
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Chema Madoz,
Madrid 1995, Reina Sofía Photography Collection |
CC: I see more of that all the time. I prefer to acquire works printed by the photographers themselves, but certainly we have works in our collection in which that’s not the case. And we still consider these to be "original" works. We bought several photographs by Chema Madoz, for example, who had an exhibit here last January. He never does his own printing. The person who does his printing is an excellent photographer and experienced printer, however, who works closely with Madoz.
YDL: Photography raises special issues when it comes to limited editions,
pricing, and so on.
CC: Yes, it does. Honesty is the most important ingredient. If a photographer says he’s doing a limited edition, then he needs to stick to that limit. Sebastiao Salgado has what I think is an honest and profitable pricing schedule. He sells his first print for, let’s say, $100. The next person who wants a print of that photograph will pay $110, the next $120, and so on. He doesn’t do a limited edition, but in effect lets a price limit determined by photography purchasers dictate a print’s edition limits.
YDL: If I want to become a photography curator, how should I prepare
myself?
CC: Knowing the history of photography is essential. Some U.S. universities such as Yale offer doctorates in the history of photography. Europe offers fewer formal degrees in this field. Studies in art history are very important. You need to know the art environment in which photography was born and continues to be a part. Reading what’s available, attending exhibits, and visiting college libraries are all good things to do.
Photographic know-how is not essential. I lost my camera two years ago and haven’t taken a picture since! But I am thoroughly familiar with photographic techniques and printing processes, and I’m aware of how these affect the value of a work.
YDL: And the age-old question, is photography art?
CC: Absolutely. But I want to make a point here. Precisely because photography is an art form, photographers don’t need to embellish their work with unnecessary add-ons or techniques. Look at this--a photographic image on a glass box attached to a coat hanger. This adulteration simply isn’t necessary. It looks like the photographer has an inferiority complex. Photography doesn’t need overdressing. It’s a language unto itself.
Look at these photographs by Witkacy. No painter can achieve the exacting portrait of madness that he’s created in his photos of this man. Yes, photography is definitely art.
YDL: What does photography mean to you?
CC: I’ll be honest with you. When I was in charge of prints, drawings, and photographs, I devoted little time to photography. I appreciated it, but it wasn’t my priority. Now, I’m a photography mother! I defend it---it’s my child, and I’m going to be sure it has braces and glasses and grows up healthy. And I’ve learned that photography can be as subjective as any other art from, more so now that digitalization has entered the scene.
YDL: Where do you think digital techniques will take photography?
CC: I think it will be at least another ten years before we see the full artistic effects of digital techniques on a grand scale. For now, I think digital techniques are waiting for the right artists to explore them, photographers who know how to keep the artistic results from being bland and cold. Video artist Bob Wilson has shown exceptional artistry with his digital work. And Pedro Meyer of Zone Zero is helping to educate photographers on digital techniques in a very professional way.
One thing is certain. Photography continues to be a visual art form with unlimited potential. I think it’s that potential that keeps us most intrigued, and that makes photography not only artful, but also fun.
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Ysabel de la Rosa is an artist and writer living in Madrid, Spain. Her husband Felipe Sánchez is a choreographer whose company, España Danza, is currently performing Spanish regional dances.
Photos reproduced courtesy of the Reina Sofía They are here for your online viewing only and may not be used for any other purpose without permission.
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