LACMA ACQUIRES VERNON PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION

Bloomberg’s Stephen West reports that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired more than thirty-five hundred photographs from the collection of the late Marjorie and Leonard Vernon, including works by Ansel Adams, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Edward Steichen. The museum said the Vernon collection is “the most significant and valuable gift of photography” in its history. The purchase was funded by trustee Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation, which also will help pay for a photography study center at the museum. The room will open in 2011 and provide access to LACMA’s entire photography collection, which numbered about eighty-five hundred images before the Vernon acquisition. “Photography claims an ever-larger presence within the history of art,” said Michael Govan, the museum’s director. “Encyclopedia museums like LACMA must have a substantial and growing commitment to photography and media.” The collection, with works by more than seven hundred photographers, was assembled by the Vernons, starting in 1976, and was acquired from their daughter and her husband for an undisclosed sum. Leonard Vernon was a longtime real estate developer and builder in Los Angeles.