Nelson-Atkins gets Hallmark photos

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., has acquired the Hallmark Photographic Collection, considered the most broad-ranging private collection of American photography, with some 6,500 works by 900 artists.

Featuring a number of early daguerreotypes and comprehensive holdings by individual artists as well as single works by a variety of artists, the collection includes images by such masters in the field as Southworth & Hawes, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Harry Callahan and Andy Warhol.

“It’s clearly one of the very best holdings of American photography,” said Keith F. Davis, who has overseen the collection since 1979 and is the museum’s curator of photography. “It spans the entire history of photography from 1839 to the present, with all the major names, as well as lesser names not often found in history books.”

-- Lynne Heffley