The Avedon photographs––a part purchase and part gift from the photographer’s foundation, which was in place well before his death in 2004––spans nearly his entire career. There are well-known portraits of personalities like Marilyn Monroe and Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Twiggy. There are also nine photographs, first shown at MoMA in 1974 and taken from 1969 to 1973, that chronicled Avedon’s father, Jacob Israel Avedon, in declining health. “We’ve had it on our list for a long time to improve our Avedon photographs,” said Peter Galassi, chief curator of photography at the museum.

The second acquisition is a bequest from Suzanne Winsberg, a collector who lived in New York and Paris and who died last year. During the 1970s, as the market for photography began to take off in Paris, Winsberg began putting together a collection of nineteenth-century images including six salted-paper prints by Nadar and views of the forest of Fontainebleau by Le Gray.