Telephone, Railroad Station, Central City, Nebraska

Artist Wright Morris (American, 1910 - 1998)

Date1947

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 9 5/8 x 7 5/8 inches (24.45 x 19.37 cm)
Framed: 20 3/4 x 16 3/4 inches (52.71 x 42.55 cm)

Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Object number2005.27.4292

InscribedSignature Signed in artist's hand Back of Print In pencil

On View

Not on view

Collections

Photography

Terms

DescriptionWooden wall phone.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Rotation 4. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 20, 2008 – January 15, 2009, no cat.

Rotation 13. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 28, 2012 – January 6, 2013, no cat.

Gallery Label

Wright Morris achieved renown as both a writer and a photographer. Combining these skills, he created the influential photo-text volumes The Inhabitants (1946) and The Home Place (1948). This photograph is from The Home Place, a detailed study of the small farming town in Nebraska in which Morris had been born. Morris spent several weeks in Central City in the spring of 1947 recording familiar things—chairs, doorways, family photographs or an old public telephone—to suggest the texture of a vanishing way of life.

Provenance

Wright Morris Estate;
With Merrily Page, San Francisco, CA by 1995;
Purchased from Merrily Page by Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 1995;
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.

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