The Daguerreian Society is excited to announce the details of its exclusive, behind-the-scenes institution visits being offered at this year’s Symposium & Photo Fair in Houston.

The private briefings, which provide access to rarely seen institutional images and other holdings, are always a highlight of the annual gathering.

All of this year’s curator-led tours will be offered on Thursday, October 17 – the first day of the three-day Symposium.

Online sign-up will begin at noon ET on Saturday, September 14, via the Society website and will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis.

To access the sign-up form once it goes live, go to the home page, scroll down to “Latest News & Events” and look for the “Upcoming Society Events” area, where one registers for the Symposium & Photo Fair. Then click the link titled “2024 Symposium Behind-the-Scenes Tours” (it is not yet live).

To sign up, members and others must already be registered for the Symposium. So be sure to register before September 14 and take advantage of the early-bird (discounted) ticket price, which ends on September 17. 

A code required to register for the tours will be emailed to all Symposium registrants the day before the sign-up opens. 

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Symposium attendees will have the opportunity to sign up for two tours as well as a curated briefing of a 19th-century photography exhibit at the San Jacinto Museum and Battlefield. San Jacinto, the site of the famous battle where Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, is roughly a 30-minute car ride from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, this year's host institution.

In addition, registrants will be able to go on a self-guided tour of the MFAH’s permanent collection galleries at their leisure, throughout the Symposium. The MFAH’s permanent galleries include a particularly rich selection of early American, British, and French photographs.

Curated Behind-the-Scenes Institution Visits

Tour 1 | Treasures of 19th-Century Photography
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON
Tour 1A | 11:15 am
Tour 1B | 1:00 pm
Tour 1C | 3:00 pm
Tour 1D | 2:00 pm (added on 9/18)

Description: MFAH photography curator and longtime member Malcolm Daniel will bring out some of the museum’s treasures of 19th-century photography for a close-up look and discussion in the Anne Wilkes Tucker Photography Study Center. Works on view will include:

• the Meade Brothers’ 1851 whole-plate portrait of Sam Houston;
• the recently acquired 1839-40 whole-plate still-life by Daguerre’s assistant Alphonse-Eugène Hubert;
• Charles Chevalier’s 1840-41 whole-plate view of Paris;
• Platt Babbitt’s whole-plate view of Niagara Falls;
• other daguerreotypes by French, British, and American makers

In addition, there will be paper prints on view by:

• British photographers William Henry Fox Talbot, Hill and Adamson, John Thomson, and Julia Margaret Cameron;
• French Photographers Félix Teynard, Charles Marville, Edouard Baldus, Bisson frères, Gustave Le Gray, and Nadar;
• Americans Timothy O’Sullivan, Frank Jay Haynes, Edward Sheriff Curtis, and others.

Duration: 50 minutes
Group size: Up to 20 people per session
Instructions: Meet in the lobby of the Audrey Jones Beck Building 5 minutes before start of program

 

Tour 2 | American Art Galleries
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON
2:00 pm

Description: Christine Gervais, MFAH Curator of Decorative Arts, will lead a tour of the American Art galleries focused especially on 19th-century painting, sculpture, and decorative arts. These galleries showcase the collection in an installation that draws particular attention to broader stories of class, gender, and race, to reveal both connections and conflicts between artists and styles in an effort to offer a more complete and nuanced picture of American art. This tour does not include photography, except for one or two items, but will appeal to those whose love of the 19th century is broader than photography.

Duration: 50 minutes
Group size: Up to 25 people
Instructions: Meet in the lobby of the Audrey Jones Beck Building 5 minutes before start of program

Tour 3 | Navigating the Waves: Contemporary Cuban Photography
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON
2:00 pm 

Raquel Carrera, co-curator of the exhibition and now a curatorial associate in the Museum’s Department of Latin American Art, will lead a tour of this special exhibition. Drawn from the Museum’s collection and celebrating the gift and purchase of some 300 works from the Chicago collectors Madeleine and Harvey Plonsker, the exhibition traces the evolution of the medium in Cuba from the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 through the 2010s. The exhibition is particularly rich in the years following the early 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent “Special Period” of economic hardship in Cuba, a time during which artists turned inward, exploring Afro-Cuban traditions, the body, and issues of memory and identity. This tour is not about the 19th century, but will appeal to those whose love of photography is broader than the 19th century.

Duration: 50 minutes
Group size: Up to 30 people
Instructions: Meet at the exhibition entrance on the third floor of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building

 

Tour 4 | The Nau Civil War Collection
LOCATION TO BE ANNOUNCED
Tour 4A | 1:30 pm
Tour 4B | 2:30 pm

Description: Interested since childhood in the Civil War, Houstonian John L. Nau III formed one of the largest private collections of Civil War documents, photographs, weapons, and artifacts in the country, now largely housed at the Nau Center for Civil War History at his alma mater, the University of Virginia. Part of the collection remains in Houston, however, and Sally Anne Schmidt, curator of the Nau collection, will speak about the collection before turning participants loose to closely examine photographic works – primarily ambrotypes and tintypes – one on one.

Duration: 45 minutes
Group size: Up to 20 people per session
Instructions: Address will be provided to participants (approximately a 15-minute drive from the MFAH). Meet at the address at least 5 minutes before the start of the program. Parking information will be provided

 

Tour 5 | Special Exhibit of Early Texas Photographs
SAN JACINTO MUSEUM AND BATTLEFIELD
Tour 5A | 9:00-9:30 am
Tour 5B | 9:30-10:00 am
Tour 5C | 10:00-10:30 am
Tour 5D | 10:30-11:00 am
Tour 5E | 1:00-1:30 pm
Tour 5F | 1:30-2:00 pm
Tour 5G | 2:00-2:30 pm
Tour 5H | 2:30-3:00 pm
Tour 5I  | 3:00-3:30 pm
Tour 5J  | 3:30-4:00 pm 

Local member Curt Robbins, a sponsor of this year's Symposium, has partnered with the San Jacinto Museum to create a special exhibit of 19th-century images drawn from his and the Museum's extensive collections. The exhibit will comprise over 200 images, including 45 daguerreotypes, 35 ambrotypes, 33 tintypes, and the rest early prints – with many related to Texas history, made by Texas photographers or likely taken in Texas. There will also be four to six special groupings of images from Texas families and ephemera from Texas photographers.

In addition to the special exhibit, admission to the Museum will cover all of its venues and attractions, including:

• the permanent exhibit featuring many 19th-century images along with personal artifacts of key figures from Texas history, such as Sam Houston, Santa Anna, and Sidney Sherman (commander of Houston's army), as well as group images of Native Americans and African Americans and a couple post-mortems; 
• "Texas Forever!!," a 35-minute multimedia production on the Battle of San Jacinto, shown every hour on the hour;
• the monument's top-floor observation deck, 500+ feet in the air;
• the park with walking paths and nature trails.

At 2:45 pm, a tour van that can seat 14 people will tour the battleground where Houston captured Santa Anna. 

Duration: 30 minutes for the special exhibit private tours
Group size: Up to 15 people per session
Instructions: Discounted admission ($10) with Daguerreian Society badge

NOTE: The San Jacinto Museum is 24 miles from the MFAH, about a 30-minute drive, traffic permitting. Traffic can be heavy throughout the day. Directions here.

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Self-guided Tour

A History of Photography
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON
Open during all Museum hours
Thursday, 11 am-9 pm

Description: Visit the Photography Department’s permanent collection galleries on your own or with friends. In recognition of the Daguerreian Society’s visit to Houston, this display includes a particularly rich selection of American, British, and French photographs from the first 50 years of the medium, including numerous photographically illustrated books such as:

• William Henry Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature
• Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War
• Maxime du Camp’s Égypte, Nubie, et Palestine
• William Bradford’s Arctic Regions
• Julia Margaret Cameron’s “Norman Album.”

Daguerreotypes from the collection will be shown in the Study Center sessions listed above.

Duration: Unlimited (self-guided)
Group size: Unlimited
Instructions: On the second floor of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building

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Only registrants with Daguerreian Society badges will be admitted to the tours or have access to the museums. Badges will be included in the Symposium registration packets, which will be available for pickup at the InterContinental Houston hotel on Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 16 and 17, from 10 am to 4 pm.

If you have any questions about the tours or signing up for them, please contact Cindy Motzenbecker at motz48073@yahoo.com.

For questions about the Symposium, please contact Diane Filippi at info@daguerreiansociety.org.