The UBS Art Collection, the Swiss bank’s corporate art holding comprising more than 30,000 works, has donated 166 photographs to the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC—the biggest single UBS donation to a museum. Included in the gift are works by Terry Evans, Dorothea Lange, Charles Savage, Alfred Stieglitz, Carleton Watkins and Edward Weston. Of the 96 photographers whose images are included in the gift, 75 are new to or underrepresented at the NGA.
The photographs come from a 300-work sub-collection gathered by the late John Szarkowski, longtime head of the photography department at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, in the years following his retirement in 1991 for the US bank PaineWebber, which UBS acquired in 2000. The works, gathered around the subject of land use, span decades and include landscapes, still lifes and portraits.
Mary Rozell, global head of the UBS Art Collection, tells The Art Newspaper that the NGA was “our first choice given the theme of the group, the importance of the photography department there and the fact that the NGA is a national museum with free admission for the public”. Rozell and her team chose Sarah Greenough, head of the photography department at the NGA, as caretaker of the gift in an effort to preserve Szarkowski’s legacy. Greenough “personally came to New York to examine each photograph”, Rozell says.
Jean Bernard, Woman Sewing, Man Painting (1900) National Gallery of Art, Washington; Gift of the UBS Art Collection
Greenough said in a statement: “This wonderful gift from UBS adds important work to the National Gallery’s photography collection that will allow us to explore how artists have viewed our use of and relationship to the land over the last 160 years.”
“Together, all of the images—dating from the 1860s to the 1990s—tell a story, not just of the evolving American landscape in the broadest sense, but also of the evolution of the medium of photography,” Rozell says. “We hope museum visitors will get a glimpse of the various ways land has been used in America—the impact of industry, the transformation of the environment and the celebration of the rich and diverse American topography. It is important to us to be able to share our collection with the public, and I’m thrilled that visitors will have access to the photographs for enjoyment and study.”
An exhibition of the photographs is planned for 2026 at the NGA. Rozell notes that members of the public can also make an appointment to see works not currently on view in the NGA’s Photograph Study Room.