The University of Pennsylvania Libraries has announced a gift from collector William H. Miller III of rare photographic plates by photographer Edward S. Curtis appraised at $4.2 million.

The gift includes 151 interpositive glass plates by Curtis (1868–1952), who photographed Native Americans from more than eighty tribes over three decades using a photogravure process whereby each glass negative that he prepared was printed again as a glass positive before the image was moved onto a copperplate for etching. The vast majority of the interpositive glass plates he produced were destroyed. Curtis, who produced a twenty-volume work titled The North American Indian, published between 1907 and 1930, removed aspects of modernity, such as alarm clocks, from the final prints he made, and often posed the people he photographed for the volumes dressed in traditional clothing.

Curtis first exhibited his photographs at the Penn Museum in 1912, and the Museum Archives includes among its holdings 109 photogravures as well as sixty-six platinum prints signed by him. The Museum Library has a nearly complete set of the original edition of The North American Indian.

"The use of glass plates by the great nineteenth-century photographers, including Edward Curtis, required a cumbersome and time-consuming process involving heavy equipment, delicate glass plates, volatile chemicals, and great artistic ability to make each photograph successful," said Stephan Loewentheil, founder and president of the 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop and a member of the Penn Libraries Board of Advisors. "The Penn Libraries, in conjunction with the Penn Museum, will allow this process and resulting masterworks to be exhibited and studied, allowing for both wide public exposure and study by experts, students, and the interested public."

"Edward S. Curtis's photographs raise complex issues of representation of Native American peoples in both the past and the present," said Christopher Woods, Williams Director of the Penn Museum. "This gift to the Penn Libraries complements the Penn Museum's existing Curtis collection. Through interdisciplinary collaboration at the University and beyond, we can create meaningful opportunities to expand teaching and research in conversation with today's living Native American photographers, scholars, artists, students, and community members."

Photo Credit: The Great Courses Daily

"Penn Libraries receives major gift of rare photographic plates by Edward S. Curtis." University of Pennsylvania press release 10/20/2021.