id: 141753 accession number: 1965.333 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1965.333 updated: 2020-05-18 09:01:58.977000 Thunderstorm Over the Great Plains, Near Cimarron, New Mexico, c. 1961 (printed after 1965). Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984). Gelatin silver print; image: 36 x 48 cm (14 3/16 x 18 7/8 in.); matted: 55.9 x 71.1 cm (22 x 28 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Photography in the Fine Arts 1965.333 © 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust title: Thunderstorm Over the Great Plains, Near Cimarron, New Mexico title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: c. 1961 (printed after 1965) creation date earliest: 1956 creation date latest: 1966 current location: creditline: Gift of Photography in the Fine Arts copyright: © 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust --- culture: America, 20th century technique: gelatin silver print department: Photography collection: PH - American 1951-Present type: Photograph find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) - artist Ansel Adams American, 1902-1984 San Francisco-born Ansel Adams took his first photograph in 1916. More than a dozen years later (during which time he also trained as a concert pianist), he decided on photography as a career. A master of the natural landscape photograph, Adams became famous for his spectacular, reverential images of the American West. He also was known for his technical skill, conceiving the zone system method of exposure and development control. An advocate of straight, unmanipulated photography, in 1932 Adams cofounded Group f/64 (among the other founding members were Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, and Willard Van Dyke), and that year exhibited his work with the group at San Francisco's M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. In 1936 his images were featured in a one-person exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's New York gallery, An American Place, and three years later he took part in group exhibitions at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1940 Adams helped found the department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, and later in the decade was awarded two fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to photograph America's national parks. Beginning in the 1930s and continuing throughout his long, productive career, Adams published numerous books and portfolios of his images. His technical books on photography, including Making a Photograph, Basic Photo Series, and Polaroid Land Photography Manual, were also popular. Adams was influential not only as a photographer but also as a teacher, lecturer, and conservationist. In 1980 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor. M.M. --- measurements: Image: 36 x 48 cm (14 3/16 x 18 7/8 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 71.1 cm (22 x 28 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Typed on label on verso: " 'East to the Great Plains,/From Cimarron, New Mexico'/Original Photograph by Ansel Adams" translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Year in Review: 1965 opening date: 1965-10-27T04:00:00 Year in Review: 1965. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (October 27-November 14, 1965). title: Ansel Adams: Photographs from the Permanent Collection opening date: 1993-10-15T04:00:00 Ansel Adams: Photographs from the Permanent Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 15, 1993-January 9, 1994). title: Contemporary Landscape Photography opening date: 2011-03-26T00:00:00 Contemporary Landscape Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 26-August 14, 2011). title: Ansel Adams: A Photographer’s Evolution opening date: 2018-06-23T04:00:00 Ansel Adams: A Photographer’s Evolution. Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 16, 2018). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Photography in Fine Arts. New York World's Fair, New York, NY (1965). * Selection of Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Kenneth C. Beck Center for the Cultural Arts, Cleveland, OH (1979). --- PROVENANCE --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: One of the most important, well-known, and influential photographers of the 20th century, Adams is indelibly associated with visually stunning images of the unsoiled environment in the American West. This expansive scene is one of his iconic landscapes made around 1961 when he took a trip to Cimarron, New Mexico, visiting the Philmont Scout Ranch, which occupies some 137,500 acres of wilderness in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. From an elevated viewpoint, Adams celebrated the romanticized beauty and form and the ethereal western light of this vast, flat landscape. The irregular, white fluffy clouds, set off by the dark stormy sky, hover over the land like guardian figures. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Lee, Sherman E. "Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 52, no. 9 (1965): 124-57. page number: p. 157, no. 173 url: www.jstor.org/stable/25152069 --- IMAGES