Robert Frank Centenary Logo Lockup

Robert Frank, New York City, 7 Bleecker Street, 1993 © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation.

Celebrating the Centenary of Robert Frank

Welcome to the hub for Robert Frank's centenary.

A Swiss-born photographer and filmmaker who broke new ground with his candid, poignant images of American life in the mid 20th century, Robert Frank is one of the most influential figures in the history of his medium. This year, to mark the centenary of the artist’s birth, museums and galleries around the world—including Pace—are mounting exhibitions dedicated to his work, celebrating his radical approach to image making that forever changed the course of photography and film.

Here, on our hub for Frank’s centenary, we’re compiling a list of these landmark presentations, updating this page throughout the year as other projects are announced.

Robert Frank, spread from Mary’s Book (detail), 1949. Illustrated book with gelatin silver prints. Gift of the Howard Greenberg Gallery. © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation.

Robert Frank, spread from Mary’s Book (detail), 1949. Illustrated book with gelatin silver prints. Gift of the Howard Greenberg Gallery © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation

Robert Frank: Mary’s Book

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
December 21, 2024–June 22, 2025

This exhibition takes an in-depth look at the personal scrapbook of photographs Robert Frank made for Mary Lockspeiser, the woman who became his first wife. Created in 1949, the one-of-a-kind, handmade book represents a formative moment in Frank’s career, when he experimented with juxtaposing images and text.

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Look Out for Hope by Robert Frank

Robert Frank, Look Out for Hope, 1979 © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation

Hope Makes Visions

Pace Gallery, New York
November 15 – December 21, 2024

In celebration of the centennial of Robert Frank’s birth, Pace—in collaboration with The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation—will present an exhibition of the artist's work at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. The show, opening in November 2024, will center on Frank’s process across various media through a selection of his photographs, collages, sketches, and maquettes.

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Ocean Vuong on Robert Frank

In our new film, poet, essayist, and novelist Ocean Vuong—who contributed a new text to Pace Publishing's book accompanying the gallery's upcoming exhibition of Frank's work—answers five questions about Robert Frank and his relationship to the photographer's work.

Cover of Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions

Pace Publishing

Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions

Text by Ocean Vuong, Shahrzad Kamel

Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Pace in New York, and in celebration of the centennial of Frank’s birth, Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions presents an in-depth look at the photographer and filmmaker’s process across various media.

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(untitled) by Robert Frank

Robert Frank, (untitled), n.d. © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation

Essays

The Elegiac Genius of Robert Frank, by Ocean Vuong

Though widely known for The Americans—the seminal monograph of eighty-three photographs that challenged and altered the role of the medium in the twentieth century—Robert Frank was, at his core, a multimedia artist for whom the camera was but another tool, replete with possibility and limitations. He used the camera not as a signifier for artistic identity but rather as a wand, his subjects transformed then transfixed into netherworlds, their faces blurred or rendered immutable through his hallmark under-exposures and (seemingly) serendipitous compositions that defined a style whose imitators are now legion...

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Mabou by Robert Frank

Robert Frank, Fire Below - to the East America, Mabou, 1979 © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation

Essays

Foreword to Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions, by Shahrzad Kamel

The exhibition title Hope Makes Visions comes from a sketch by Robert Frank illustrating his work Fire Below – to the East America, Mabou (1979; p. 20). The sketch was included in a bequest Frank made of his photographs and papers to The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation upon his death in 2019. It is one of many discoveries that inspired the idea to build an exhibition around previously unseen works from Frank’s oeuvre...

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Robert Frank, The Americans Book Cover
Aperture - The Americans Reprint:

Aperture has re-released Robert Frank’s seminal photobook, The Americans—one of the most important bodies of photographic work ever made.

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On October 30 at 7PM EDT, Aperture’s executive director, Sarah Meister, will be joined by Lucy Gallun, photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, alongside photographers Miranda Barnes, Paul Graham, and Andre D. Wagner. Aligning with the centennial of Frank’s birth and the highly anticipated return of this iconic title to Aperture’s catalog, the group will discuss these indelible images and the enduring legacy of arguably one of the most influential photobooks of the twentieth century.

This event is free and open to all.

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It was just a travel log — you know, it just happened to be a little bit of a different kind of a travel log. It wasn’t one where the sun always shone.

Robert Frank

Trolley

Robert Frank, Trolley — New Orleans, 1955 © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, from The Americans

Featured in The New York Times

(opens in a new window) The 25 Photos That Defined the Modern Age

"This image, shot in the months before the Montgomery bus boycotts made segregation a national debate, showed America to itself, as if for the first time. The faces in the photographs, Kerouac wrote, don’t “editorialize or criticize, or say anything but ‘this is the way we are in real life.’”

Emmanuel Iduma

Life Dances On

Robert Frank. Mabou Winter Footage. 1977. Gelatin silver print, 23 11/16 × 14 3/4" (60.1 × 37.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2023 June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation.

Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue

The Museum of Modern Art, New York
September 15, 2024 – January 11, 2025

The first-ever solo exhibition of Frank’s work to be presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue will bring together some 200 artworks produced by the artist over the course of six decades, up until his death in 2019. The show, named for a 1980 film by the artist, will focus on the experimental ethos of Frank’s work across photography, film, and books, highlighting the ways he engaged with his contemporaries and his communities as part of his practice.

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Robert Frank, “London,” 1951, Robert Frank/The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, via The Museum of Modern Art, NY

Robert Frank, London, 1951 © Robert Frank / The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, via The Museum of Modern Art, NY

Featured in The New York Times

(opens in a new window) The Americans’ Made the Photographer Robert Frank a Star. What Came Next?

"Frank’s dissatisfaction with the limitations of a single photograph was longstanding. But before it drew him to filmmaking, it provoked his greatest achievements in photography.”

Arthur Lubow

Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1955 © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, from The Americans

Robert Frank, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1955 © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, from The Americans

Be Happy

Museum Folkwang, Essen
August 23, 2024 – January 5, 2025

To mark this centenary, Museum Folkwang is showing 34 photographs and selected documents in their presentation, Be Happy, from August 23, 2024 to January 5, 2025. Robert Frank has been represented at Museum Folkwang with his works and numerous exhibitions since the 1980s. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Histories of a Collection IV, which explores the decades-long relationship between Robert Frank and the institution.

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Indianapolis

Robert Frank, Indianapolis, 1956. Presented in collaboration with Zander Galerie and Pace Gallery © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, from The Americans.

Robert Frank: The Americans


Art Basel Unlimited, Booth U68, Basel
June 11 – 16, 2024

This year, our joint presentation with Zander Galerie at Art Basel Unlimited presents the third and final set of photographs from Frank’s seminal series The Americans, captured during a two-year journey across America that the artist embarked on in 1955. Having taken more than 28,000 photographs during this trip, Frank ultimately included 83 images in his groundbreaking 1958 monograph for the project. These photos of people and places represent a collective portrait of American identity, culture, and politics—inflected by racial, economic, and regional divisions—at the middle of the 20th century. This never-before-exhibited set of images on view at Art Basel Unlimited, which Frank retained for his personal collection, includes an 84th photograph, a triptych image that the artist added to the end of the sequence for Aperture’s 1978 edition of The Americans.

Some 150 photographs, 28 contact sheets, 17 books, and 15 documents relating to Robert Frank's The Americans were previously presented in 2009 at the National Gallery of Art in an exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the American publication of the book.

(opens in a new window) Read more about this landmark presentation here.

Delve into photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank's seminal body of work, The Americans, with this new film featuring images from the series and archival narration from several sources, including the artist himself.