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Margaret Bourke-White , (Jun 14, 1904–Aug 27, 1971)

Looking Up Inside Sending Tower, N.B.C., Bellmore, L.I.

1933
12 5/8 in. x 10 1/4 in. (32.07 cm x 26.04 cm)

Medium and Support: Gelatin silver print

Credit Line: Museum purchase

Accession Number: 1934.51

Commentary

In 1934, with the purchase of this photograph by Margaret Bourke-White, the Addison Gallery became one of only a handful of museums in the country to seriously collect photography. Since then the museum has actively acquired photographs. Today, nearly half of the collection of approximately 17,000 objects is photography. Over seventy years in the making, the Addison's photography collection has become one of the major repositories of American photography.

Margaret Bourke-White established her career photographing the American Machine Age. The iconic images she made in the late 1920s and early 1930s for corporations and magazines such as Fortune and Life are unreserved endorsements of modern industrialization. This particular photograph was the result of a mural project commissioned by NBC for their studios in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Placing her camera inside the structure and tilting her lens upward, Bourke White employed a dramatic viewpoint to monumentalize her subject and convey the power of American technology. Characteristic of all of her work and reflective of her modernist aesthetic, the photograph is both persuasive document and fine art object.

Allison Kemmerer
Curator of Photography and Contemporary Art

Exhibition List

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Photographs by Margaret Bourke-White Addison Gallery of American Art , 3/1/1934 - 3/30/1934
Looking at America: Photographs from the Collection, 1850-1980 Addison Gallery of American Art , 5/8/1981 - 6/14/1981
American Abstraction at the Addison Addison Gallery of American Art , 4/18/1991 - 7/31/1991
American Abstraction from the Addison Gallery of American Art American Federation of Arts , 2/27/1993 - 12/4/1994
Industrial Evolution: Photographic Images and Ideas Addison Gallery of American Art , 1/14/1995 - 1/7/1996
Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years Addison Gallery of American Art , 4/13/1996 - 7/31/1996
Sculpture in Context Addison Gallery of American Art , 4/17/1999 - 7/31/1999
Classic Modern: Art Deco Silver from the Collection of John P. Axelrod (PA 1964) Addison Gallery of American Art , 4/30/2005 - 7/31/2005
In Focus: 75 Years of Collecting American Photography Addison Gallery of American Art , 4/28/2006 - 7/31/2006
American Modern: Documentary Photography by Abbott, Evans and Bourke-White Amon Carter Museum of American Art , 10/2/2010 - 10/2/2011
Infinite Connections [Phillips Academy Art 300] Addison Gallery of American Art , 6/4/2013 - 7/31/2013
Industrial Strength: Selections from the Collection Addison Gallery of American Art , 2/1/2014 - 4/13/2014
Exterior Spaces, Interior Places Addison Gallery of American Art , 9/2/2014 - 1/4/2015
Photographers Among Us Addison Gallery of American Art , 4/7/2018 - 7/31/2018
An Incomplete History of Photography: 1860s to 1960s Addison Gallery of American Art , 10/16/2020 - 2/21/2021
Learning to Look: The Addison at 90 Addison Gallery of American Art , 5/8/2021 - 2/6/2022
Women and Abstraction: 1741- Now Addison Gallery of American Art , 1/28/2023 - 7/31/2023

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