An anonymous donor has given the Penn Libraries an outstanding collection of Arthur Tress photography, partially valued at over $4.2 million. Thanks to the recent gift, the Penn Libraries is now home to the largest collection of Tress photographic prints in the United States.
Tress, age 80, is known for larger format, staged and surreal photographs. “Arthur Tress will emerge as the dominant social realist photographer of the 20th century,” said Jonathan Katz, Interim Chair in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at Penn and a history of art professor. With this anonymous gift, in addition to another recent gift from J. Patrick Kennedy, PAR’97, and Patricia Kennedy, PAR’97, Penn Libraries now has a combined 2,500 Tress prints. Direct gifts to the Penn Libraries like the Tress photographic images allow for students and scholars alike to participate in appreciating and studying valuable art that they might not otherwise access.
Katz, one of the founding figures in queer art history, counts Tress as one of the most important modern photographers of our time. The iconic photographer shot some of the first images of public LGBTQ life and is among the greatest original visual artists of his generation. “His work can be whimsical or dream-like, and has had an impact across many fields,” said Katz. Tress scholars credit the photographer with a high level of emotional intelligence, resulting in exciting photographs that contain both complexity and contradiction. “We want to get these images out into the world,” said Lynne Farrington, Senior Curator in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Penn Libraries. “It’s exciting to have such extensive collections of contemporary photography, a new frontier in scholarship.”
Tress himself gave the University his personal collection of 1,300 Japanese illustrated books in 2018. Penn’s scholars agree that there is a connection between the books and Tress’s own photography. “There is a long history of Japanese culture being very accepting before 1869, when they opened up to the West and imported homophobia,” said Katz.
A forthcoming exhibit of the Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books will be curated by 2021 Guggenheim Fellow Julie Davis, a history of art professor who is considered a foremost authority on Japanese prints and illustrated books. The exhibit will include Tress photographs that were received as a part of the recent, anonymous gift and highlight the relationship between Japanese aesthetics and Tress’s own. “I visited Arthur in 2018 to see his collection of Japanese illustrated books,” said Davis. “We invited him to Penn later that year, where he gave a talk and saw our students working in the conservation lab. He knew Penn was the perfect place for his collection.”
Beyond the Penn Libraries, Tress photographs can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington), and at Stanford University.
