NY April 11: During a blitz of mere days, the MoMA is deaccessioning 1000 vintage prints by legendary photographer Eugène Atget, an event which is causing enormous excitement in the international art world and beyond, if only by the sheer volume of the work being made available in one fell swoop.

Photography's turn-of-the-century aesthetic movement equated art with the suppression of fact. Eugène Atget overturned that aesthetic. Over the course of his long career he discovered and progressively mastered photography's capacity to transform plain fact into visual poetry. (—D. Tunick)

When Eugène Atget died in 1927, photographer Berenice Abbott and art dealer Julien Levy purchased five thousand prints from his studio. They sold a part of the collection to the Museum of Modern Art in 1950, when Steichen was curator, the remainder in 1968.

Many of these images being offered have never appeared on the market before, and since many will no doubt be purchased by private collectors or for museum archives, they may never be seen again. The quality of the prints is outstanding. In fact, many are the prints that were used for the reproductions which appear in the standard reference books on Atget.

The MoMA selected David Tunick of David Tunick Galleries at (46 East 65th Street, 570-0090, tunickart.com) as its exclusive dealer. Knowing the extent of interest the collection would generate worldwide, Mr. Tunick arranged to have 480 of the 1000 images posted online at artnet.com. April 29 is the absolute deadline for purchase. Prices from $3,000 to $120,000.

The magazine will be running a follow-up article/interview with David Tunick in the May issue.

—MH