Beaumont Newhall (June 22, 1908 – February 26, 1993) was an American curator, art historian, writer, photographer, and the second director of the George Eastman Museum.
Because of financial difficulties during the Depression, Newhall was not able to devote himself to his doctoral studies, and eventually accepted a position at the Museum of Modern Art as a stable source of income.
Lewis Mumford in his review in The New Yorker, noted that Newhall, "who assembled the photographs and instruments for the Museum, did an admirable job in ransacking the important collections for historic examples" and praised his catalogue as "a very comprehensive and able piece of exposition; one of the best short critical histories I know in any language.
[3] In 1940, Newhall became the first curator of MoMA's photography department and decisively began collecting for the Museum,[13] starting with the work of László Moholy-Nagy.
Newhall married Nancy Wynne, a notable photography critic who worked in his place as curator at MoMA during his service in World War II,[14] in which his rank was First Lieutenant.
He was joined there by Minor White who took over editorship of Image,[17] the magazine Newhall issued from the Museum, which later passed on to Nathan Lyons who turned it into a respected quarterly.
Newhall published books through the Museum including Edward Weston's Daybooks, co-published with Horizon press; Photographers on Photography edited by Lyons; and on Aaron Siskind.
[1] He was predeceased by his wife Nancy on July 7, 1974, from injuries she sustained when struck by a falling tree on the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park.