Facebook: Images of People in Photographs from the Permanent Collection consists of just fifty photographs from nearly 3,000 prints in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center collection. On view today through August 10, 2008, the exhibition examines the development of the photographic portrait from the nineteenth century through today. According to ArtDaily, “While the Facebook social networking website has proven to be enormously popular, linking millions of photographs of faces to searchable biographical data, the notion of collecting and cataloguing pictures of people is not a new one…prior to the information age, photographs were helpful tools for research, record keeping, and documentation.” The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is located on the Vassar College campus. The above photograph by Rinieke Dijkstra was a gift of Vassar alumni and art dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn (class of 1989).
Facebook features many influential photographers of the twentieth century including August Sander, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, and some newly acquired Polaroids by Andy Warhol, which depict celebrities such as John Denver and Liza Minnelli. Also included in the exhibition: Sally Mann (Season 1), Laurie Simmons (Season 4), Althea Thauberger, Berenice Abbott, Walead Beshty, Richard Avedon, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Lee Freidlander, Nan Goldin, Mark Goodman, Lewis W. Hine, Sherrie Levine, Helen Levitt, Lee Miller, Thomas Ruff, Paul Strand, Larry Sultan, Weegee, and Garry Winogrand.
