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Face Value:
Celebrity Press Photography
June 28, 2025 – June 21, 2026
The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity. Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.
Organized by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.
Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL.
Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black, with major funding from The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), and The Young Patrons Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
Press Kit
Images
Ray Jones. Anna May Wong portrait for the film Limehouse Blues, Soul of a Dragon, 1934. Gelatin silver print, 12 7/8 × 10″ (32.7 × 25.4 cm)
Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine in Island in the Sun, 1957. Gelatin silver print, 6 15/16 × 9 1/16″ (17.6 × 23 cm)
Bob Beerman. Rock Hudson, c. 1953. Gelatin silver print, 9 15/16 × 8″ (25.2 × 20.3 cm)
Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe in The Bad One, 1930. Gelatin silver print, 13 7/8 × 10 15/16″ (35.2 × 27.8 cm)
James Manatt. Joan Crawford portrait for the film Letty Lynton, 1932. Gelatin silver print, 13 × 10″ (33 × 25.4 cm)
Otto Dyar. Carole Lombard, c. 1933. Gelatin silver print, 13 7/8 × 10 1/2″ (35.2 × 26.7 cm)
Jackie Robinson, c. 1950. Gelatin silver print, 10 × 8″ (25.4 × 20.3 cm)