James Van Der Zee. Tap Dance Dress Rehearsal (1928), vintage gelatin silver print The Tsiaras Family Photography Collection
William Tsiaras has a good eye a trait that serves him well as both an ophthalmologist and an influential photography collector, who has quietly donated hundreds of works to museums over the years. His latest gift is to his undergraduate alma mater’s Colby College Museum of Art in Maine of more than 500 photographs from his personal collection, built over the past 25 years alongside the works he would acquire for institutions. As a board member and former chair, “he really put the idea on the table that the museum needed to have a collection of photography,” says the Colby Museum’s director Jacqueline Terrassa, adding that Tsiaras’s involvement with funding for purchases and matching gifts, starting in the early 2000s under former director Sharon Corwin, “transformed the whole collection”.