Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Winding Tower, Glenrhondda Colliery, Treherbert, South Wales, Great Britain
Bernd and Hilla Becher German
Not on view
The Bechers’ iconic photographs of winding towers (also known as mineheads) are among their works most coveted by public institutions and private collectors alike. For some, the appeal is the form’s expressive beauty and clear function; for others, it is the typographic quality of the structures and the dignified way the towers are fixed to the ground upon which they sit and do their work. The Bechers made this photograph in South Wales on a travel grant sponsored by the British Council to provide a visual anthology of Welsh coal mining at a time when the National Coal Board was shutting down collieries across the United Kingdom. Glenrhondda opened in 1911 and closed in 1966, around the time they made this picture.
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