The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) announced that Anne Havinga, Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Chair of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston and Karen Haas, Lane Senior Curator of Photographs at the MFA, Boston are the recipients of the annual AIPAD Award.
The AIPAD Award is given to visionaries who have spent their lives committed to promoting and fostering a deeper understanding of and appreciation for fine art photography. Recognizing and celebrating these figures, the Award ceremony will be presented during the VIP Opening of The Photography Show presented by AIPAD, taking place this year on Wednesday, April 23, 2025.
For more than thirty years, Anne Havinga has led and overseen the growth of the photography collection at the MFA, Boston into one of the most significant in the United States. Exemplifying her stewardship, in 2019 the museum acquired the Howard Greenberg Collection, which included rare prints of modernist masterpieces and mid-20th-century classics, along with historically important examples of documentary photography and photojournalism. She has organized a number of landmark exhibitions, including Hiro: Photographs (2016), In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11 (2015), Silver, Salt, and Sunlight: Early Photography in Britain and France (2012) and an expanded version of Art and the Camera: The Photographs of F. Holland Day (2000).
Karen Haas has been the Lane Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since 2001, where she has specialized in the curation of the collection’s extensive holdings of photographs by American modernists, such as Charles Sheeler, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham. She has curated a number of historically significant and critically lauded exhibitions, including Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott (2015); Bruce Davidson: East 100th Street (2013) and Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass (2012). Among the publications she has overseen are An Enduring Vision: Photographs from the Lane Collection (2011); MFA Highlights: Photography (2007); Ansel Adams: In the Lane Collection (2006) and The Photography of Charles Sheeler: American Modernist (2002).
“The team of Anne Havinga and Karen Haas, who along with Kristen Gresh, have been steadfast partners with all of us in their long standing efforts to build a world class collection evidencing the history of photography,” said Howard Greenberg. “Their openness and willingness to learn, acquire and include photographs from the wide swath of what we galleries have offered, has had a great impact on our field. Personally, I can tell you that the enthusiasm, ability and indeed true passion they bring to their work is inspiring. I’m deeply grateful that the results of nearly fifty years of my collecting efforts ended in their capable hands. I will never forget the moment they came to my crowded booth at the opening night several years ago, after seeing my collection show in Amsterdam, and cut straight through the dense wall of people to tell me in no uncertain terms, that they wanted it! Their determination was something I hadn’t experienced before and it gave me the patience to survive a few years of work in making it happen. Bravo to the most capable team of curators who have brought incredible exhibitions, excellent scholarship and an open door to our world of fine photography in Boston and beyond.”
Havinga and Haas will be part of a panel on Thursday, April 24 at 1pm, which will open the AIPAD Talks program. They will be in conversation with Jean Dykstra, editor of AIPAD Exposure and an independent journalist. The Photography Show looks forward to hosting this conversation examining both the history of the medium and modern experimentations today.
About the AIPAD Award
The AIPAD Award was established in 2017 to acknowledge those who have significantly changed the photography landscape. Previous AIPAD Award winners are Vince Aletti, Critic & Collector; Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom, Curators of Photography, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, in 2023; Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce F. Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2022; Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator and Head of the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 2019: Keith F. Davis, formerly Senior Curator of Photography at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., in 2018; and Anne Wilkes Tucker of The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Sandra Phillips, Curator Emerita of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in 2017.
