Berenice Abbott
Born 1898, Springfield, Ohio
Died 1991, Monson, Maine
1917-1918 Ohio State University
Selected museum exhibitions: Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona (2019); Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2016); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2012); National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (1998); International Center for Photography, New York (1981, 1989, 1995); Dallas Museum of Art (1992); National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. (1982); Museum of Modern Art (1970); New School for Social Research (1959); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1953); Cooper Union, New York (1940); Museum of the City of New York (1934, 1937)
Selected honors: Legion of Arts and Letters, France (1988); International ERICE Prize for Photography (1987); Honorary Doctorate, Bowdoin College (1982); Honorary Doctorate, Smith College (1973); Honorary Doctorate, University of Maine (1971)
Selected public collections: Cleveland Museum of Art; Jewish Museum, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of the City of New York; New York Public Library; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
A central figure in American photography, Berenice Abbott moved to Paris in 1921, working in Man Ray’s studio and championing the work of Eugène Atget. Returning to the United States in 1929, her incisive portraits and the urban views published in Changing New York, 1939, earned her considerable renown. With its mixture of modernist commercial architecture, signage, and decoration, Abbott’s American Shops, Lodi, New Jersey, 1954, documents the inventiveness of the car-centered culture then emerging in the postwar United States. Public institutions with this photograph in their collections include the Dallas Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.