PORTLAND, ME.- The Portland Museum of Art announced that Judy Glickman Lauder—photographer, collector, humanitarian, advocate, philanthropist, and community builder—has made a monumental gift of more than 600 works of art to the museum through a Promised Gift, immediately transforming and cementing the PMA as an international destination for photography.
Anchored by works from some of the most beloved and influential photographers of the 20th century, including Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Margaret Bourke-White, Danny Lyon, Sally Mann, Gordon Parks, and James Van Der Zee, the collection will become the center of a photographic collection at the Portland Museum of Art that will thrill audiences from around the world. The collection also includes photographs by critical contributors to the medium’s history, such as Irving Bennett Ellis, Graciela Iturbide, Lotte Jacobi, Alma Lavenson, Ben Shahn, and Glickman Lauder, the collector herself.
“The breadth and quality of this collection is remarkable,” says Mark Bessire, the Judy and Leonard Lauder Director of the Portland Museum of Art. “Judy’s lifelong love of photography and devotion to Maine comes together through this landmark gift, and our region’s future is immediately strengthened through the universal appeal of these artworks.”
The PMA envisions the collection’s impact to go far beyond the museum’s galleries and walls. Much like Charles Shipman Payson’s gift of seventeen Winslow Homer paintings in the 1980’s made way for campus growth and unification, expanded gallery experiences, and improved community engagement, the Judy Glickman Lauder Collection will serve as a keystone for the next great chapter in the museum’s 140-year history.
By creating a home for these works at the museum, Glickman Lauder enriches Maine’s already spectacular artistic legacy and pens an exciting new chapter. In the years to come, this moment will be looked back on as a tipping point for our region, the museum, and photography in Maine.
Visitors to the PMA will get their first look into the collection in October 2022 when selections will be on view as part of the major exhibition Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder. The exhibition takes its name from the common thread that unites these works—presence of the photographer, the viewer, the
subjects, as well as the photographs themselves. Consisting entirely of works from the Judy Glickman Lauder Collection, Presence captures the full spectrum of the human experience, from the anonymous to the celebrity and from the everyday to era-defining events such as the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the Civil Rights Movement. Through compassion and wonder, Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder immediately stands out as one of the most humanistic and affecting exhibitions of 2022.
The exhibition will be the first major exhibition curated by Anjuli Lebowitz, PhD, the PMA’s newly named and inaugural Judy Glickman Lauder Associate Curator of Photography. Dr. Lebowitz joined the museum from the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where she worked on several exhibitions and catalogues including Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work, 1940-1950 and the upcoming American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams. Previously, she was a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where she curated Faith and Photography: Auguste Salzmann in the Holy Land. She has organized scholarly panels on the visual culture of caregiving and women-identifying artists in national collections.
A companion publication will be produced to commemorate Glickman Lauder’s generosity to the PMA. Published by Aperture and edited by Chris Boot, the book will include about 140 full plate reproductions with an introduction by Mark Bessire, the Judy and Leonard Lauder Director of the Portland Museum of Art, an essay by Dr. Anjuli Lebowitz, the Judy Glickman Lauder Associate Curator of Photography, and reflections from Judy Glickman Lauder on her life in photography.
Judy Glickman Lauder is internationally known as an acclaimed photographer, collector, humanitarian, advocate, philanthropist, and community builder. Her life’s work, whether through her art, her generosity, or her collecting, is defined by a deep appreciation for life and all its intricacies. This fascination with humanity, and the nuances and complexities therein, encompasses all her creative and spiritual endeavors, and has led her across the world in the pursuit of connecting people to one another.
Glickman Lauder has made indelible contributions to the field of photography in Maine and beyond. As a trustee of the Portland Museum of Art, Glickman Lauder’s transformative capacity has been on full display for decades, supporting the museum’s exhibitions, collections, galleries, mission, and more. Over the years, her collection has enabled countless presentations, exhibitions, and unforgettable moments at the museum. Her guidance and wealth of knowledge have supported the PMA’s photographic program and enabled the museum to develop a contemporary and photographic audience.
As an artist, Glickman Lauder’s photographs have been exhibited worldwide and are represented in over 300 public and private collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the United States Holocaust Museum. Numerous books of her work have been published, most recently Beyond the Shadows: The Holocaust and the Danish Exception which was published by The Aperture Foundation on the 75th anniversary of the remarkable rescue of the Danish Jews during the Nazi occupation in 1943. The publication features Glickman Lauder’s photographs over a 30-year span documenting concentration camps and portraits of both survivors of the rescue and the brave men and women who risked their own lives to help deliver the Jews in danger east to Sweden.
Judy Glickman Lauder was born in 1938 and raised in Piedmont, California before moving to Los Angeles as a teenager. She later attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she met and eventually married Albert B. Glickman.
Over the next fifty-four years, the couple developed a national reputation as committed philanthropists, and for Judy, an additional reputation as an advocate and champion for the photographic arts. Her involvement with fellow photographers at the Maine Photographic Workshops was a major turning point in her relationship with photography and the camera and would set her off on a new path exploring the medium’s unique qualities and characteristics. Albert Glickman passed away in 2013, and in 2015 Judy married her family friend and fellow art enthusiast and collector Leonard A. Lauder. Together, they have continued to build on Judy Glickman Lauder’s legacy of humanitarianism through the arts, supporting the Portland Museum of Art as well as a wide variety of arts and cultural organizations, receiving the Gordon Parks Patron of the Arts Award in 2016.
