Image Guide

Exhibition and installation images document the setup and display of special exhibitions, installations, and sometimes permanent collection rotations in the galleries.

A timeline of all exhibitions at the museum from 1876–2019 is available on the History of the Philadelphia Museum of Art guide. 

The Archives holds many historic images of the museum staff, trustees, volunteers, and affiliates. The following are key collections in the Archives for this area:

• Exhibition and installation images were taken from the museum's beginning at Memorial Hall.
• Rights and Reproductions Photograph Collection contains standardized images from the mid-1920s onward. The images are housed in folders and organized by date. 

Tips

Look for the options to search within the collection by keyword or year. 

Notes:

• Not all exhibitions received photography, especially if they had a short duration or were during the summer
• The photographs are usually 8×10 black-and-white gelatin silver prints
• Usually, the negatives are housed with the prints inside the folder
• Physical production of the prints stopped in the early 2000s
• Color images of exhibitions and installations started in the mid-1960s but were taken via slides
• In the 1990s, digital photography took over

Contact the Archives with the collection names and box numbers you wish to examine.

Design for the Machine: Contemporary Industrial Art, 1932, Rights and Reproductions Collection.