The Life and Work of Sid Grossman

Keith F. Davis has worked as a photography curator and historian for nearly forty years. After overseeing the Hallmark Photographic Collection, beginning in 1979, he became the founding curator of photography in 2006—and is now senior curator—at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. He is the author of many books, including The Origins of American Photography: From Daguerreotype to Dry-Plate, 1839–1885 (2007); The Photographs of Homer Page: The Guggenheim Year, New York, 1949–50 (2009); Timothy H. O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs (2011); The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker (2012); Emmet Gowin (2013); and Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath (2015). He received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1986-87) for his work on the Civil War-era photographer George N. Barnard, and was included in James Stourton’s definitive study, Great Collectors of Our Time: Art Collecting Since 1945 (2007). He has curated more than 100 exhibitions and has lectured widely on various aspects of 19th and 20th century photography.