Gerald Kornblau Photograph Collection

Collection

Identifier: A0076

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The contents of this collection date from approximately the 1850s to the 1930s, across fifteen broad subject areas: animals, architecture, funereal, landscape, leisure/picnic, military, music, occupation, portraits, school, sports, sill life, store fronts, street scenes, and transportation. This collection displays multiple early photography formats and processes, including albumen prints, ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, tintypes, and cyanotypes.

Dates

Majority of material found in 1850s-1930s

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research. Access to sensitive materials may be restricted at the discretion of the American Folk Art Museum.

Conditions Governing Use

The Gerald Kornblau Photograph Collection is owned by the American Folk Art Museum. The collection is subject to all copyright laws, and is dedicated to public use for research, study and scholarship.

Biographical / Historical

Gerald Kornblau (1928-2011) was an authority on American folk art and a dealer who sold works to private and museum collections. Kornblau was also a photographer. He was assigned to take photographs while in the army during the Korean War, and some of his war photographs were published in National Geographic in 1953. This cemented a lifelong love of photography, which was evidenced in Kornblau’s collection of vernacular photography and also his documentation of art objects.

Born in New York in 1928, Kornblau opened a gallery in Manhattan in the late He had a passionate interest in nineteenth-century decorative sculpture and weathervanes, so much so that he reprinted the 1875 catalog of weathervanes and finials manufactured by J. W. Fiske. At the 1975 Winter Antiques Show, Kornblau debuted the c. 1812-1813 portraits of Ashbel and Patience Stoddard, residents of Hudson, New York, attributed to Ammi Phillips.

Extent

806 object(s)

14 linear feet (21 half-size document cases; 2 oversized flat boxes; framed and unframed large oversized materials)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

The Gerald Kornblau Photograph Collection is comprised of 806 vernacular photographs and photographic objects. The collection is the result of years of collecting and curating by folk art dealer and photographer Gerald Kornblau.

Arrangement

This collection is arranged by subject at the box level. The subjects are based on the catelgories defined by appraisers Penelope Dixon and Associates, Inc. It is not clear the role that Kornblau had in categorizing and numbering his collection. For a more itemized account of the contents of the collection, researchers should consult the linked collection inventory.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Suzanne Morel and Michael O'Neill

Processing Information

This collection was inventoried when it was appraised by Penelope Dixon and Associates, Inc. in 2019. The inventory numbers and the subjects assigned to the photographs during the inventory remain largely in tact. Photographs were in mats when the collection was received. Most mats have been removed for to maximize storage capacity.