NEW YORK.-The Museum of Modern Art will display more than 50 photographs made in New Orleans that are being donated for public sale by Lee Friedlander. All proceeds from the sale, with no deductions for expenses of any kind, will benefit the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund, a non-profit organization formed to help musicians recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The photographs, priced at $3,000 and $5,000 depending on size, will go on view in the Museum’s lobby on Thursday, September 15, 2005, and will be available for sale through Friedlander’s New York gallery, Janet Borden, Inc., which may be reached at 212-431-0166 or mail@janetbordeninc.com. The public may enter the lobby without paying Museum admission in order to view the photographs. All of the donated photographs, including some additional prints not on view at the Museum, may be seen at www.janetbordeninc.com.

“Music is the heartbeat of New Orleans,” says Friedlander, and the photographs he has donated for sale include many of his celebrated portraits of the city’s musicians, from Sweet Emma Barrett, Billie and De De Pierce, and Wooden Joe Nicholas (all made in the late 1950s and early 1960s) to Aaron Neville (1990), as well as classic views of New Orleans’ famous brass bands and the “Second-Liners” who followed them. Also included are some of Friedlander’s most well-known street photographs of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as key images from other major projects, including The American Monument (1976), Letters from the People (1993) and Sticks and Stones: Architectural America (2004).

The New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund was established by Benjamin Jaffe, impresario of Preservation Hall, the venerable music venue in the heart of the French Quarter, and manager and bass player with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The Band will play during public hours at MoMA on Saturday, September 17, beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the lobby. Those who wish to donate directly to the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund may log onto its web site at www.preservationhall.com or call 1/888-229-7911.

The exhibition Friedlander, the most comprehensive survey of the artist’s work to date, was shown at MoMA from June 5 through August 29, 2005, and will inaugurate its European tour at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, from November 16, 2005 through February 12, 2006.