Penn Libraries recently announced an anonymous gift containing works from photographer Arthur Tress.
This donation brings the total number of photographic prints in Penn Libraries’ collection to 2,500, Penn Libraries News reported. A portion of this latest addition has been appraised at $4.2 million.
Penn Libraries previously received another collection of Tress photography prints from the parents of a 1997 Penn graduate, Penn Libraries News reported. Penn Libraries is home to a collection of over 1,400 Japanese illustrated books gifted by Tress himself in 2018.
Tress began his career as a photographer in New York as a teenager in the 1950s, Penn Libraries News reported. Since then, he has traveled the world for his photography, working most recently in Asia and Africa. Tress also worked for the U.S. government documenting Appalachian folk cultures.
His works gifted to Penn Libraries represent his expansive career, including pieces of his ethnographic documentation and of his more recent Bauhaus style work, Penn Libraries News reported.
Tress’ art is exhibited throughout the United States in museums and institutions from California to New York. His work is also displayed in Paris at the Centre Pompidou.
Some of the most recently gifted photographs are set to be displayed in 2022 in the Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books exhibit curated by Art History professor Julie Nelson Davis, Penn Libraries News reported.
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