A Centennial Album

Book excerpt: The Met’s collection of drawings, prints, and photographs is an expansive work in progress and is considered one of the nation’s greatest repositories of humanity’s creativity. This Bulletin celebrates the centennial of the founding of the Department of Prints. William M. Ivins, the visionary founding curator of the department, had an expansive view of what constituted a “work on paper”—a philosophy that informed much of The Met’s collecting over the next century. The result today is a comprehensive repository reflecting an astonishing diversity of artists, genres, and media. Arranged as a provocative series of pairings—one drawing or print with one photograph—this Bulletin invites the reader to find connections and divergences between works of art that are rarely seen together, ranging in date from the fifteenth century to present day.