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(The Alfred Stieglitz Collection is unavailable for viewing due to renovations currently underway at the Carl Van Vechten Gallery.)

The Stieglitz Collection

The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern American and European Art came to Fisk University in 1949 as a gift from Georgia O’Keeffe. As executor of her late husband’s estate, O’Keeffe was charged with the daunting task of apportioning Stieglitz’s large collection (almost 1000) of paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs. She divided the collection and donated the majority of it to six institutions: Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (O’Keeffe’s alma mater); National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Fisk University’s Alfred Stieglitz Collection is comprised of 101 paintings, sculpture, prints and photographs by 29 acclaimed American and European artists, including Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Diego Rivera, Arthur Dove, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Gino Severini, Abraham Walkowitz and Alfred Stieglitz, himself. African sculpture from Stieglitz’s collection also was included in the gift.

Gallery 2 of the Carl Van Vechten Gallery houses the permanent exhibit of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern Art at Fisk University.

Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) is considered one of greatest photographers in the history of the medium and is credited for transforming photography from a method of mere documentation into an art form. He was the first photographer to make pictures of night scenes and in the rain in the 1890s and he was the first person to experiment with double exposures. Stieglitz printed few impressions of his negatives and many were destroyed during printing. As a collector and cultural entrepreneur, Stieglitz encouraged many young American artists, including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth and John Marin, to experiment with their art and develop new ways to create. Alfred Stieglitz is well known also for his enthusiastic promotion of European avant-garde in the United States as an example of artistic innovation he saw as being rooted in African sculptural interpretation. He is credited for mounting the first exhibition of African sculpture as art rather than as ethnographic artifacts in the United States at his gallery 291 in 1914.

Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887 Sun Prairie, Wisconsin -1986), one of America’s most renowned artists is best known for her bold paintings of flowers, animal bones and the desert landscapes of New Mexico. Georgia O’Keeffe also was the wife of photographer, Alfred Stieglitz. Upon her husband’s death in 1946, O’Keeffe donated 101 works from Stieglitz’s personal collection of Modern Art, including two of her own works, Radiator Building—Night, New York and Flying Backbone, to Fisk University “with the hope that it may show that there are many ways of seeing and thinking…” In 1949, the artist visited Fisk in order to select a location for the exhibition of her gift to the University. She selected the University Gymnasium. Working closely with Fisk students, faculty and staff, and after the building was converted to exhibition space, O’Keeffe personally supervised the original installation of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

Dr. Charles Sturgeon Johnson

Dr. Charles Sturgeon Johnson (1893 Bristol, Virginia -1956), the first African American president of Fisk University, was also very instrumental in bringing the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to Fisk. His enthusiastic endorsement of this gift was a direct reflection of his belief that the collection represented important scholarly and cultural value to Fisk, the Nashville community and the South. Dr. Johnson was a sociologist who founded the Race Relations Institute at Fisk in 1942, which is still in existence today.

Works in the Collection

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Alfred Stieglitz Collection List