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17 March 2014
Here's the deal. The artist will personally print and sign 25 photographs from a catalog of 70 images. But you can select only 15 of them and you have to demonstrate to the artist you're a serious collector. Wait, there's more. You have to promise never to sell them, donating them to a museum if you no longer want to keep them.
That's the deal Ansel Adams made in the 1970s, pricing it at $30,000. And The Museum Set Edition of Fine Prints was indeed sold to a "few dozen" buyers. The set sold to one of those buyers, Leonard and Marjorie Vernon, passed on to their family, which donated it to the Getty Museum for safe-keeping.
To honor the thirtieth anniversary of Adams' death next month, the museum will exhibit them, along with a few other of his prints and a video. The museum notes:
In the 1970s, Ansel Adams—internationally renowned photographer and conservationist—sought to preserve his archive for future generations by creating the Ansel Adams Museum Set, a portfolio of his greatest work. Inspired by the recent acquisition of a "Museum Set," this exhibition also includes earlier works by Adams from the Museum's permanent collection, offering visitors an opportunity to view changes in Adams's printing styles and an understanding of the photographer's assessment of his life's work.
In Focus: Ansel Adams can be found in the lower level of the West Pavilion of the Getty Center.
The exhibit opens tomorrow and runs through July 20.Admission is free but parking is $15.