NEW YORK (The New York Times)—For the New York Times, Carol Vogel reports on an upcoming photography sale at Sotheby's in February that reads "like a Who's Who of the medium's earliest masters."

"Just as intriguing," she says, "is the provenance: the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

The photographs, by artists like Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Outerbridge and Edward Weston are part of the Gilman Paper Company Collection of photographs — more than 8,500 works, says Vogel — which the Met acquired "as a partial gift and partial purchase that resulted from years of negotiations."

With the acquisition, the Times says, the Met became "one of the world's pre-eminent repositories of 19th-century photographs." Met officials told the paper that it was an "all-or-nothing deal," and that since "curators couldn't pick and choose, the museum ended up with many duplicates."

How much is it worth? The museum isn't telling, but Vogel says that "experts in the field estimated that it could bring $100 million on the open market."

"We're raising money on things that aren't necessary for the collection," Malcolm Daniel, the curator in charge of the Met's photography department, told the Times, "to pay for things that strengthen it."


FOR FULL STORY CLICK:
New York Times: "The Met Is to Auction Some of Its Photographs"