George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film and the International Center of Photography in New York City announced in 2000 a formal alliance, to make their collections and programs more widely available to the public and to foster the study and understanding of photography. This partnership has established innovative programming, has fostered new audiences, and has set a standard for collaborations in the museum world, garnering recognition nationally and internationally.
A key component of the Alliance is the jointly organized exhibition series titled “New Histories of Photography.” A total of nine exhibitions have been mounted, from Daguerreotypomania! in 2000 through the exhibition currently on view at ICP, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. These small presentations have highlighted new approaches to the history of photography, utilizing the extensive photographic collections of both George Eastman House and the International Center of Photography and the ongoing research of their curators. A second key project of the Alliance is a combined website and digital catalogue. Through the website photomuse, Internet visitors will be able to access more than 300,000 images online and search the two collections simultaneously.
The current Alliance project, Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes, is a major exhibition of more than 160 daguerreotypes by the famed Boston photographers. Featured are daguerreotypes and artifacts from George Eastman House plus thirty-seven other institutional and private lenders. It is accompanied by a major scholarly publication and is the most ambitious Alliance project to date.
The International Center of Photography was founded in 1974 by Cornell Capa, as an outgrowth of the Fund for Concerned Photography. As both a museum and a school, the International Center of Photography features a permanent collection of more than 150,000 images, an ambitious exhibition program, and world-renowned education programs for graduate and undergraduate study in photography. Most recently, the International Center of Photography initiated an active publishing program with Steidl, one of the premier publishers of photographic books.