The Met Announces Landmark Promised Gift of Photographs from World-Renowned Collection of Artur Walther and the Walther Family Foundation

(New York, May 14, 2025)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today a major promised gift from Artur Walther, who has assembled one of the most distinguished private collections of photography in the world, and from the Walther Family Foundation, an art foundation dedicated to the critical understanding of historical and contemporary photography. Comprised of some 6,500 photographs, albums, and works of time-based media, the promised gift features modern and contemporary art from Africa, China, Japan, and Germany, among other places. Also included are 19th- and 20th-century vernacular photographs from the United States, Europe, Colombia, and Mexico. Selections from the collection will be prominently featured in several upcoming museum presentations. In the first of these, photographs by such renowned African artists as Seydou Keïta and Samuel Fosso will accompany the inauguration of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing when it reopens in May 2025. A focused exhibition of international selections from the promised gift will then be presented in fall 2025, followed by a comprehensive show of the collection in 2028. Photographs and time-based media will also be incorporated into future displays in the Tang Wing, The Met’s new galleries for modern and contemporary art set to open in 2030.

“This vast trove of photographs from Artur Walther and his foundation is nothing short of extraordinary. It demonstrates Artur’s passion as a trailblazing collector and visionary explorer, and brings his sustained scholarly engagement with living artists and photographic practice to a new level,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “With its impressive scope, depth, and quality, the generous promised gift expands our ability to tell a global history of photography—one that reflects the diversity, complexity, and artistry of the medium across centuries and continents. In addition to the upcoming display in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, these works will also come to the fore and play an important role in our future collection displays of global 20th- and 21st- century art in the Tang Wing.”

Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs, added, “At The Met, The Walther Collection will become an essential resource for scholars and museum-goers. With its phenomenal range of photographs and time-based media, the Collection introduces perspectives from artists around the globe, situating the camera as a powerful tool for social critique, reflection, and change.”

Alisa LaGamma, Ceil and Michael E. Pulitzer Curator in Charge of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, noted, “In his collecting, Artur Walther has prioritized the achievements of African photographers, assembling what is among the finest surveys to date. We are thrilled at the opportunity this legacy offers to bridge The Met’s exceptional collections of photography and African art.”

David Breslin, Leonard A. Lauder Curator in Charge, Modern and Contemporary Art, said, “As our vision for the Tang Wing takes shape, Artur Walther’s remarkable gift will be instrumental in allowing us to tell a more nuanced and global story about modern and contemporary art.”

“It has been the Collection’s mission to break away from traditional frameworks and to juxtapose works from African and Asian artists with those from Europe and America, creating a dialogue across time and place, across temporalities, and across geographies,” said Artur Walther. “The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s commitment to modern and contemporary art, and the arts of Africa and Asia, will continue this approach and will make the artworks available to its diverse constituency of visitors from all over the world.”

Collection Overview and Highlights

The Walther Collection is principally known for its photographs by 20th-century and contemporary artists from across the African continent. Walther conceived the collection to explore how photographers documented the enormous social change that has unfolded over the last century. Highlights include photographs by Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, Samuel Fosso, Zanele Muholi, David Goldblatt, Santu Mofokeng, Yto Barrada, Jo Ractliffe, Lebohang Kganye, S. J. Moodley, Guy Tillim, and J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere. These and other artists in the collection use the camera to explore shifting roles of identity, as well as transforming landscapes and built environments. Their investigations consider the roles of architecture and spatial planning to shape social order, and interrogate experiences of migration, colonialism, war, and industrialization. The collection holds superb photographs by the most prominent African artists working with the camera in South Africa, Namibia, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Congo, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Morocco.

The Walther Collection is equally rich in late 20th-century and contemporary photographs and video from China. These works show the widespread adoption of the camera by successive generations of Chinese artists after the Tiananmen Square events of 1989. In them, photographers respond to transformative changes not only to the urban landscape, but also to social relations and everyday life. Notable examples include works by Ai Weiwei, Hai Bo, Hong Hao, Luo Yongjin, Yang Fudong, and Zhang Huan. The collection also includes a significant group of Japanese photographs, with large holdings of works by Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki.

Walther first began his collection with photography from his homeland of Germany. Included in the promised gift are three outstanding typologies by Bernd and Hilla Becher, and works by their predecessors, Karl Blossfeldt and August Sander, and their students such as Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff, as well as more conceptual photography by Günther Förg, Jürgen Klauke, and Dieter Appelt. Additionally, the collection features a small number of photographs by other important international artists, such as Vito Acconci, Claudia Andujar, William Christenberry, Bruce Davidson, and Stephen Shore.

A large group of vernacular photographs—Walther’s most recent collecting focus—charts the history of the medium across evolving formats and uses, beginning with the daguerreotype in the 1840s. The subjects offer a comprehensive view of photography’s artistic, scientific, and commercial aims.

In 2010, The Walther Collection opened its inaugural exhibition Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity, organized by the late curator Okwui Enwezor, at its newly designed Museum Campus in Neu-Ulm, Germany. Since then, the Collection has organized nine major thematic and monographic exhibitions at its museum. Several of these exhibitions traveled widely, including to museums in Europe, Mexico, and West Africa. From 2011 to 2021, the Walther Family Foundation also operated The Walther Collection Project Space in Chelsea, New York, introducing photographers from Africa and Asia to American audiences for the first time through solo and thematic exhibitions, public programs, and symposia co-organized with Columbia University and New York University. The Collection co-published twenty books with Steidl, all of which have broadened the scholarship about modern and contemporary photography by spotlighting artists who have made a substantial contribution to the history of the medium.

Displays in Michael C. Rockefeller Wing and Tang Wing

Select works from the promised gift will be integrated within The Met’s fully reimagined and renovated galleries for the Arts of Africa, part of the redesigned Michael C. Rockefeller Wing opening on May 31. A wall near the galleries’ entrance will be dedicated to rotating thematic displays of photography in dialogue with works in other media. The focus of the rotations for this display in the Wing’s inaugural year is the original approach to self-portraiture by three individuals. The iconic photographs sourced from Walther’s promised gift range from those of Malian Seydou Keïta made during the independence era to a recent portrait by South African Zanele Muholi. These photographs will be juxtaposed with works from The Met’s collections and other critical loans to explore the evolution of self-portraiture from across the medium’s history. Samuel Fosso’s acclaimed African Spirits series (2008) will be highlighted in the threshold between the Rockefeller Wing and the Modern and Contemporary Art galleries. In this tribute to heroes of the fight for freedom and justice of the African diaspora, Fosso adopts the personae of Martin Luther King Jr., Tommie Smith, Angela Davis, Patrice Lumumba, Léopold Senghor, and Aimé Césaire, among others.

The collection will also be featured in the forthcoming Tang Wing, with select works incorporated into the Museum’s presentation of art spanning movements in modernism to contemporary practices from around the world. Designed by architect Frida Escobedo, the 126,000-square-foot, five-story wing is set to open in 2030, with more than 70,000 square feet for the presentation of art and approximately 18,500 square feet of outdoor space spread across the fourth- and fifth-floor terraces.

About Artur Walther

Artur Walther began collecting photography in the late 1990s, initially focusing on German modernist photography before expanding to contemporary photography and video. In 2010, he established the Walther Family Foundation. The foundation, which operates a large exhibition space in Neu-Ulm, Germany, presents thematic and monographic exhibitions drawn from the collection’s expansive range of photography and media art, including African, Chinese, Japanese, and European holdings of modern and contemporary works, 19th-century photography from Europe and Africa, and vernacular lens-based artwork from across the globe. Walther is the recipient of the 2016 Trustee Award from the International Center of Photography (ICP) and the 2021 Kulturpreis of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh). Born in Neu-Ulm, Germany, he received his MBA from Harvard Business School and was later a partner at Goldman Sachs.

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May 14, 2025