As the Museum of Contemporary Photography celebrates its 40th anniversary this week, the institution faces an existential question: Should a place devoted to photography worry that the fundamental definition of the medium has recently and radically changed? The explosion of amateur pocket photographers could seemingly wipe out the need for a brick-and-mortar monument to an aging art form. Inside the museum, images are stored in dark, refrigerated vaults, while everywhere else pictures are exchanged at the speed of light. But the MoCP is celebrating its birthday by displaying about 200 of its most significant holdings, and several surprises. It’s a self-assured gesture for an establishment born out of change, which in many ways is a Chicago story.
Despite the nearby Art Institute of Chicago opening its own photography department at roughly the same time as Columbia, “there was no venue for contemporary photography,” recalls Mulvany. The distinction of “contemporary” photography is important—it was a matter of life or death, so to speak. Major museums prefer to exhibit and purchase the work of dead artists, those already established by the canon of art history. But a contemporary museum could be more nimble, less tied to the masterpiece market, and risk its exhibition space on newer, younger talent. Mulvany even set a strict policy for what enters the MoCP’s permanent collection: nothing made before 1959, and work by Americans only. Those parameters refer to the title and publication date of Robert Frank‘s influential book The Americans; Mulvany considered it the start of modern photography. The new movement would finally have a good home.
“People are always asking us, how do you define photography?” Egan says. “We don’t even like to try to define it. It’s image based, and images can be quite broad.” More definitively, Egan follows up, “artists lead the change.”
Through 4/10; opening reception Thu 1/28, 5 PM Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College 600 S. Michigan 312-663-5554mocp.org Free
