PHOTO:American Moments

The Phillips Collection, opened in 1921, is America’s first museum of modern art, featuring a permanent Collection of nearly 3,000 works by American and European impressionist and modern artists. It is housed in founder Duncan Phillips’ 1897 Georgian Revival home and two similarly scaled additions in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: The Phillips Collection Archive

Although a passionate Collector of painting, Duncan Phillips became interested in the creative possibilities of photography, expressing his belief by the mid‐1920s that photography was important for a Museum devoted to Modern art. For Phillips, Alfred Stieglitz revolutionized photography with his artist’s sensibility and perception. In 1935, Phillips wrote, “Stieglitz has made the technique of photography not merely self‐controlled but sensitive and intensely emotional”. This appreciation led Phillips to begin collecting photographs during the 1940s including 27 works by Clarence John Laughlin and 19 of Stieglitz’s Equivalents, given to the museum in 1949 by Georgia O’Keeffe. In the 1940s, Phillips inaugurated a series of photography exhibitions at the Museum, including one of Laughlin’s first solo Museum shows. Before his death in 1966, Phillips, who knew and admired the great French Photographer Henri Cartier‐Bresson, made certain to acquire a number of his photographs in addition to organizing a solo show of the artist’s work at the museum. The Phillips’s photography Collection has continued to develop and is now the Museum’s fastest growing area of acquisition. Approximately 1,000 examples comprise the Collection, 94% of which have been gifts to the Phillips. Works by American Photographers make up 84% of this total Collection.