Reviews - January 14, 2021
In 2016, on the occasion of an exhibition of the photographs of Louis Draper at Steven Kasher Gallery, Hyperallergic critic John Yau asked, “Does the Museum of Modern Art Even Know about This Great Photographer?” Apparently, they didn’t. Although Draper, who had died in 2002, was a prominent Black photographer and one-time president of the Kamoinge Workshop, there was little evidence that New York’s august Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) had paid much attention. MoMA’s communications director tersely informed Yau that the museum did, indeed, own photographs by Draper and other members of the Kamoinge Workshop. But they had been consigned to what was unceremoniously called the “study collection” work deemed “not appropriate for acquisition to the Collection.”