ART

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will soon house a new photography collection, thanks to a $1.8-million gift from the Ford Motor Co. The amount is said to be the largest corporate gift ever received by the museum for the acquisition of art. The Ford Motor Company Photography Collection consists of 500 photographs from the period between the two World Wars. Represented is the work of 180 American and European photographers including Man Ray, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Edward Steichen and Charles Sheeler. The company also will sponsor a five-city exhibition of selected photographs from the collection. The exhibition, which will be part of an international commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography, is scheduled to reach Los Angeles in May, 1990.