Brooklyn Museum to acquire 200 contemporary photos in niche

Works by female artists from European countries

October 1, 2021 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

The Brooklyn Museum. Photo: Richard Barnes

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The Brooklyn Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) have announced the joint acquisition of 200 contemporary photographs by women artists from 17 countries in Western and Eastern Europe.

The gift comes from Houston-based collector Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl, whose expansive collection has been built over the course of 20 years and showcases an impressive range of styles and approaches to photography from that period.

The collection features works by nearly 90 emerging and established women artists.

This is the Brooklyn Museum’s largest joint acquisition as well as the largest gift of contemporary photography ever received by the museum, and bolsters its long-standing commitment to collecting works by women artists.

The gift will be made in installments over the next 10 years, with the first including 20 works selected by Sir Mark. Works in subsequent installments will be chosen by Drew Sawyer, curator of photography at the Brooklyn Museum; Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Photography and Prints and Drawings departments at LACMA; and Eve Schillo, assistant curator of photography at LACMA, with Sir Mark.

One of the photos by European women artists that is being acquired jointly by the Brooklyn Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from the collection of Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Museum

The gift will be supplemented over the next 10 years by annual acquisitions of works by contemporary European women photographers, with the goal of augmenting and diversifying the Brooklyn Museum’s and LACMA’s permanent holdings.

The two museums will also receive a donation of 10 additional works from Sir Mark, selected in concert with the curators.

Furthermore, Sir Mark’s gift includes the Haukohl Travel Grant, which provides resources to advance curatorial travel, research, and scholarship each year for the next decade, allowing curators to attend European photography fairs.

Anne Pasternak, the Shelby White and Leon Levy director of the Brooklyn Museum. Photo by Timothy Greenfield Sanders

“The Brooklyn Museum is grateful for Sir Mark’s incredible generosity and his commitment to the patronage of women artists,” says Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum. “Amid stark financial realities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are having to think of new models that allow us to grow our collections and expand the narratives we tell through exhibitions.

“We’re proud to partner with LACMA to jointly acquire Sir Mark’s important collection, which highlights the crucial contributions by women photographers worldwide,” she said.

Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl, a Houston-based art collector and philanthropist, is the co-founder of the Medici Archive Project, located in Florence, Italy. He owns one of the largest private collections of Florentine Baroque paintings, which date from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. His collection of works by contemporary European women photographers is one of the largest of its kind in the world.