Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting ‘Americana: Photographs 1850–1950’, an exhibition tracing how photography recorded American life during a period of major social, political and technological change. The exhibition is on view through November 1 in the Honickman Galleries 156–157 in the museum’s Main Building in Philadelphia, and is free with museum admission.
Spanning the century from 1850 to 1950, the exhibition considers the changing idea of “Americana”—not simply as a collection of familiar national symbols, but as an evolving concept shaped by the people, communities and experiences that make up the United States. Its historical scope encompasses the Civil War, industrialization, mass immigration and two world wars, developments that transformed both the country and the ways its inhabitants represented themselves.
The museum’s account also emphasizes the expanding accessibility of photography during this period. Affordable studio portraits and personal cameras enabled more people to document their lives and circulate their own stories. The exhibition therefore places professional photographic work alongside images made by amateurs, presenting photography as both a commercial medium and a form of personal and communal record.
Drawn from the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection, ‘Americana’ includes a broad range of photographic objects and formats. Among them are daguerreotypes, tintypes, stereoviews, real photo postcards, photomontages and snapshots. Together, the works address everyday moments, personal histories and community traditions while offering varied perspectives on American identity.
The exhibition’s displayed works include ‘Untitled (George and Martha Washington)’, made around 1876 by an unknown artist; ‘Albino Chavarria’, New Mexico, 1898–1901, by Sumner W. Matteson; and ‘Basketball’, made around 1895–1905 by an unknown maker. Other examples listed by the museum include ‘(Untitled) Standing Man in Tilted Hat’, dating from around the 1860s, and ‘“Working for Victory” Certificate Awarded to Master Painter Willie C. Webb’, from 1942–45.
The selection also ranges across regional, historical and documentary subjects. It includes ‘The Grand Canyon of Arizona’, made in 1910 by the Kolb Brothers, and ‘Sergeant of Ordnance’, dating from around 1865 by Oliver H. Willard. The exhibition is curated by Peter Barberie, the Brodsky Curator of Photographs and Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and Renée Brown, Horace W. Goldsmith Curatorial Fellow in Photography. It remains on view in the Main Building’s Honickman Galleries through November 1.
