The Harry Ransom Center was honored this week by the Austin Critics’ Table Awards in the categories “Museum Exhibition” for I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America and “Touring Show, Art” for Arnold Newman: Masterclass. For more than 20 years, the Austin Critics’ Table Awards have celebrated achievement in the arts disciplines. An informal group of critics annually recognize Austin’s art successes, ranging from visual art to theater.
In conjunction with the exhibition Arnold Newman: Masterclass, University of Texas Press and the Ransom Center have published Arnold Newman: At Work by Ransom Center Senior Research Curator of Photography Roy Flukinger. Featuring an introductory essay by photo historian Marianne Fulton, the illustrated volume includes Newman’s iconic images alongside his contact sheets, Polaroids, and work prints complete with handwritten notes and marginalia. Providing a contextual overview of the Ransom Center’s Newman archive, the book reveals insights into Newman’s process. The book also includes Newman’s lesser known collages, commercial work, and cityscapes.
Drawing extensively from the Ransom Center’s Newman archive, the book is a rich collection of materials ranging from personal documents—such as Augusta and Arnold Newman’s holiday cards, travel ledgers, and copies of passports and pocketbooks—to some of Newman’s most iconic images. Readers can track the creative process from contact sheets with the photographer’s notes and cropping instructions to the eventual final selection and enlargement.
For Newman, a single session with the sitter was only the beginning of the creative process. Newman’s attentive markups and anecdotes litter the edges of countless contact sheets, and work prints from a portrait sitting allow readers to see how Newman approached his subject and found ways to reveal his or her character. Newman would take 10, 20, 30 and in some cases more than 50 individual photographs of a sitter, making minor adjustments each time. Though highly significant, the differences between the frames are often miniscule, but the variation in their impact can be dramatic.
The Center’s Newman archive contains all of Newman’s negatives, slides and color transparencies, all of his original contact sheets, and more than two thousand prints, including examples of color and collage work. The collection also includes Newman’s original sittings books, correspondence and business files, early sketchbooks and photographic albums.
The exhibition Arnold Newman: Masterclass opens today at the Harry Ransom Center and runs through May 12.
This exhibition explores the career of photographer Arnold Newman (1918–2006), who created iconic portraits of some of the most influential innovators, celebrities, and cultural figures of the twentieth century. Newman’s archive resides at the Ransom Center.
A bold modernist with a superb sense of compositional geometry, Newman is known for a crisp, spare style that situates his subjects in their personal surroundings rather than in a photographer’s studio. Marlene Dietrich, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Arthur Miller, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso are only a few of his celebrated sitters. Featuring more than 200 of these well-known masterworks, Arnold Newman: Masterclass also includes rarely seen work prints and contact sheets.
The first major exhibition of the photographer’s work since his death, Arnold Newman: Masterclass showcases the entire range of Newman’s photography, featuring many prints for the first time.
Admission to the exhibition is free, but donations are welcome. Free docent-led tours of the exhibition are offered Tuesdays at noon, Thursdays at 6 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m.
The exhibition can be seen in the Ransom Center Galleries on Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended Thursday hours until 7 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays the galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays.
Become a member now to receive complimentary admission and valet parking at “Face to Face,” the opening celebration for the photography exhibition Arnold Newman: Masterclass. If you are not yet a member, you may purchase individual tickets for $20 (valet parking not included) at the door.
