The New Art: American Photography, 1839–1910
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The New Art: American Photography, 1839–1910
This exhibition presents a bold new history of American photography from the medium’s birth in 1839 to the first decade of the 20th century.
FREE
The Met Museum
March 06, 2025 to July 20, 2025
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Exhibition Details

Featuring a range of formats, from daguerreotypes and cartes de visite to stereographs and cyanotypes, the show explores the dramatic change in the nation’s sense of itself that was driven by the immediate success of photography as a cultural, commercial, artistic, and psychological preoccupation.

In 1835, even before the nearly simultaneous announcement of the invention of the new art in Paris and London, the American philosopher essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson noted with remarkable vision: “Our Age is Ocular.”

Additional Details

Drawn from The Met’s William L. Schaeffer Collection, major works by lauded artists such as Josiah Johnson Hawes, John Moran, Carleton Watkins, and Alice Austen are shown in dialogue with extraordinary photographs by obscure or unknown practitioners made in small towns and cities from coast to coast.

Location

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Galleries 691-693
1000 5th Ave
New York, NY 10028

Image: Unknown Maker, Young Man with Rooster, 1850s. Daguerreotype with applied color / courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary