The New York Times
ARTS: November 7, 2003

INSIDE ART - By Carol Vogel

An Archive of Faces

In 1979 Timothy Greenfield-Sanders began photographing figures in the art world — artists and dealers, critics and curators, museum directors and collectors. Twenty years later he had amassed 700 portraits. In his archives were everyone from Abstract Expressionist painters like Willem de Kooning to top dealers like Leo Castelli.

That visual time capsule has joined the archives of the Museum of Modern Art, a gift from Agnes Gund, the longtime trustee and former president, who bought them for the museum from Mary Boone, Mr. Greenfield-Sanders's dealer. "It's a real glimpse of the last half-century," Mr. Greenfield-Sanders said.

"As an artist you always want your work to be somewhere safe," he said. "Now it will be a working body of photographs, not a dead archive." (The archives are not just for curators and scholars; the public may view them by appointment.)

All 700 portraits were seen together in October 1999 at the Mary Boone Gallery in the exhibition "Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: Art World."

The show, and the body of work itself, came about by accident. "It wasn't until eight years ago, when I began computerizing my archives, that I realized how many art world portraits I had done," Mr. Greenfield-Sanders said. "There were 440 artists, 100 critics, 100 dealers." And on it went.

For the Modern, which already has work by Mr. Greenfield-Sanders in its permanent photography collection, this is an invaluable trove. "It's a kind of research tool rather than a single body of photographs," said Glenn D. Lowry, the Modern's director. "This is a compelling look at life in New York, a snapshot of the art world at a certain moment in time."