California Photography: State of the Art

All history-of-photography exhibits are not created equal, says Sandra Phillips. She means it especially with reference to the one she recently curated for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

“This is definitely not a canonic history of photography,” Phillips says. “It could not have been put together anyplace but California. It shows exactly what is collected here and what this area has produced.”

“A History of Photography From California Collections,” at the San Francisco museum through April 30, is abundant with, for instance, images by “classic modernist photographers of California,” Phillips says.

“So there’s not one or two (Carleton E.) Watkins or Ansel Adams, there are five or six each. And, I’ve tried to show alternative ways of looking at these famous people. We have a scrapbook that Adams made when he first went to Yosemite at 14, and a five-picture sequence he made of the surf washing onto the shore. That’s a very idea-oriented way of representing nature and not the classic way one would present Adams.

“I also tried to show not only what was great and historic, but what was unusual, too. I discovered that Eadweard Muybridge, known as the inventor of photography of motion, took sequential pictures of the original San Francisco City Hall as it was being built, which is a wonderful, conceptual approach. Those prints are in the exhibit and give added insight into Muybridge. He didn’t just shoot horses galloping across his camera.”

Phillips also tried to broaden the definition of “artistic” photography, she said, selecting images from a 19th-Century “mug book” of inmates at San Quentin prison and haunting shots of Southwest Indians, taken with an early 20th-Century Kodak camera.

The prints in the 340-piece exhibit, which launches the museum’s four-part series for photography’s sesquicentennial anniversary, were drawn from more than 80 private, corporate and public collections.

“The enormous variety of the collections here is astonishing to me,” Phillips said. “I can’t think of another state, except perhaps New York, that can compete.”

GOOD GOING: Praise from the nation’s capital was heaped on the new Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts recently.

Frank Hodsoll, outgoing chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was here to announce the latest round of the $168-million federal agency’s big-bucks grants and lauded Mayor Tom Bradley and City Councilmen Joel Wachs and Michael Woo for their efforts in forming the local $20-million endowment. Both councilmen attended the grants announcement ceremony.

“I salute your mayor and Mr. Wachs and Mr. Woo for their ideas and particularly for the leadership that resulted in the extraordinary (local endowment),” Hodsoll said. “From the National Endowment for the Arts, I’d like to congratulate the city of Los Angeles for what you’ve done here.”

Hodsoll also read a letter from President Bush congratulating challenge grant recipients nationwide.

“If this nation’s worth can be measured by its artistic treasures, then America can count itself fortunate indeed,” Hodsoll read. “Barbara and I join the American people in applauding this year’s grant recipients.”

ROLLING ALONG: “The Highway as Habitat,” a photography exhibit documenting life along American highways of the ‘40s and ‘50s, is on view at the Verkehrshaus der Schweiz Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland. The show, picturing diners, drive-ins, gas stations and vacationers, initially opened at University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara, in 1986, then traveled to seven American art institutions. Its contents were culled from photographs taken for a documentary project for Standard Oil of New Jersey.

PEOPLE: Graham W. J. Beal, who has been chief curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art since 1984, has resigned. He will become director of the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha this Spring. During his tenure, Beal originated several major exhibitions, including “A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture Since 1965.”

OPPORTUNITY: The Downey Museum of Art is accepting slides from “everyone working in photography” for its juried competition and exhibition “Photograph as Document,” July 6 through Aug. 13. Photographs that “emphasize the description of subject matter” are sought. Slide submission deadline is May 30. For a prospectus, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Downey Museum of Art, 10419 Rives Ave., Downey, Ca., 90241. Information: (213) 861-0419.