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News Tue Apr 22 2008
Art Institute's Travis Stepping Down
The Art Institute of Chicago announced the retirement of David Travis, chair of the Department of Photography, effective at the end of June.
Travis began his career at the Art Institute as an assistant curator of photography in the Department of Prints and Drawings in 1972 and was a full curator in 1975, when the Department of Photography was officially established. "David Travis has had a long and extraordinarily productive career at the museum, and it is impossible to conceive of the department here without his imprint," said Art Institute President James Cuno.
Travis organized and presented more than 150 exhibitions of photography at the Art Institute, including exhibitions of the work of Walker Evans, André Kertész, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and Brassaï, and has also guest curated exhibitions shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. For his special contributions to the advancement of awareness and understanding of French culture, he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1987. He has also been a guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum and in 2002 he was named a "Chicagoan of the Year" by Chicago magazine. At the Edge of the Light: Thoughts on Photographers and Photography, on Talent and Genius, a collection of his lectures and essays, was published in 2003.
