The Honickman Foundation

Friends of the Alfred Stieglitz Center at The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Home to more than 30,000 photographs, the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Alfred Stieglitz Center boasts a collection dating from the invention of photography to the present.


Peter Barberie
PMA Curator of Photographs
The Friends of the Alfred Stieglitz Center, launched in January 2009 by PMA Curator of Photographs Peter Barberie, is creating a new sense of community for photography lovers and collectors – and a new mechanism for the Museum to support and promote photography acquisitions and programming.

As of January 2014, the Friends of the Alfred Stieglitz Center already had more than seventy members. "Many art collectors begin with photography to start building their collection, but ultimately fall in love with the art form and stay with it," says Peter Barberie. "We designed this group with photography collectors in mind. We wanted to create a community for them to get to know each other and to learn about the Museum's collection."

Half of the Friends' membership fee is directed toward photography programming. Activities have included tours of the Museum's photography collections, a trip to the AIPAD (The Association of International Photography Art Dealers) Photography Show in New York, and conversations with scholars and photographers. "There were major photography collectors in the Philadelphia area who hadn't met each other before the formation of this group," says Barberie.

The group's ultimate mission is to celebrate photography, which many members feel is one of the most expressive communications media. To that end, the other half of the membership fee is directed toward annual purchases of photographic works selected for the Museum by the Friends of the Alfred Stieglitz Center.

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