Toshiko Takaezu - Design: Online Auction New York Tuesday, February 7, 2023 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Gifted by the artist, 1997

  • Literature

    J. Stanley Yake, Toshiko Takaezu: The Earth in Bloom, New York, 2005, p. 23 for similar examples

  • Catalogue Essay

    This lot comes from the collection of Peter C. Bunnell (1937-2021), the pioneering curator, teacher, and photographic historian. Bunnell began his long career in photography as a student of Minor White’s at the Rochester Institute of Photography in the 1950s and was recruited by White to work on the seminal periodical of artistic photography, Aperture. He joined the staff of The Museum of Modern Art in 1960 as a collection cataloguer, becoming Associate Curator and then Curator of Photography. At MoMA he curated the noteworthy exhibitions Photography as Printmaking (1968), Photography into Sculpture (1970), and the first retrospective of the work of Clarence H. White (1971). In 1972, he was hired as the inaugural David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton University.

    Bunnell served as Director of the Princeton University Art Museum from 1973 to 1978, and as Acting Director from 1998 to 2000, while also being the Museum’s Curator of Photography throughout the entirety of his tenure. Bunnell built a broad-ranging collection of photographs at the Museum, the firsthand examination of which became a central element of the student experience in his classes and seminars. As a teacher and a mentor, Bunnell professionalized the study of photographic history, conferring a higher degree of rigor and status to the medium, and inspiring an entire generation of curators and photographers.

    Bunnell also built a personal collection of photography, art, and objects over the course of his long career that reflects his vast and deep understanding of the creative impulse. It is a deeply personal collection put together with a sense of joy and curiosity that includes both icons and lesser-known gems spanning the 19th and 20th centuries.

    This proceeds from the sale of his collection will be distributed to six institutions with whom Bunnell was associated—Rochester Institute of Technology, Ohio University, Yale University, The George Eastman Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and Princeton University Art Museum—to establish endowments to support the study of photographic history.

Property from the Collection of Peter C. Bunnell

32

"Closed Form"

circa 1997
Glazed porcelain.
6 in. (15.2 cm) high
Underside incised with artist's mark.

Estimate
$3,000 - 5,000 

Sold for $9,450

Contact Specialist

Benjamin Green
Associate Specialist
Associate Head of Sale
+1 917 207 9090
bgreen@phillips.com

Design: Online Auction

Online Auction 7 - 14 February 2023