Slideshow: Isaac Lagnado ’71 Gifts Broaden and Enhance Museums’ Collections

Hiroshi Sugimoto, 305/Sea of Japan, Hokkaido 1986 (From Time Exposed Seascape Portfolio), 1986/1991, tri-tone lithograph.

Edward Steichen, Nell (Steichen's Granddaughter) In a Daisy Field, ca. 1932, silver print.

Eadweard Muybridge, Yosemite National Park, 1870, albumen print.

Yousuf Karsh, Portrait of Pearl S. Buck (Sai Zhenzhu), 1959, gelatin silver print.

Hugo Adolf Bernatzik, Solomon Island Fisherman on Beach, 1937, gelatin silver print.

Associated Press Wire Photographer, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn at Army–McCarthy Hearings, April 22, 1954, gelatin silver print.

Dick Arentz, Bedford Co., Pa, 1989, platinum palladium print.

Unknown Photographer, The Doors (Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, and Robby Krieger), 1969, gelatin silver print.

Arnold Eagle, The Moor's Pavane (José Limón Dance Company, Detroit Institute of Arts [José Limón, Lucas Hoving and Betty Jones]), 1950, gelatin silver print.

Cecil Beaton, Mrs. Wallis Simpson, London, 1936, gelatin silver print.

In 1934, Rev. Bernard Hubbard, the “Glacier Priest,” explored Alaska’s Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. This is a photograph of Father Hubbard and his lead dog Katma wearing improvised gas masks while standing by a smoking volcanic crater. Photograph provided to the press October 10, 1934.

The Windward and Erik were two vessels with long Arctic careers. Both vessels were together in the Arctic in August 1901 in support of Peary’s 1898-1902 expedition.

The Windward and Erik

When not in the Arctic, Robert E. Peary, of the Bowdoin Class of 1877, shed his furs and donned formal attire, as he spent a good deal of his time courting donors to support his expeditions.

In 1937 the Russians launched an expedition in which a four-man crew was left on a large, floating expanse of ice near the North Pole. The men studied atmospheric phenomena. Here the crew is boarding the support vessel. The ice drifted and in 1938 the men were picked up off the East Greenland coast.

In the 1800s Labrador enjoyed a huge cod fishery. This Keystone View Company image of fish nets drying in a southern Labrador coastal community was part of a commercial Geography Unit used by schools.

Umberto Nobile was a famous Arctic explorer and engineer who designed and flew the airship Norge, which flew from Svalbard to Alaska and over the North Pole in 1926. He also designed and flew the airship Italia, which crashed on its third voyage in 1928, killing some of the crew and injuring Nobile.

A member of the 1937-38 Russian expedition that used a floating expanse of ice as a base of operations is going about routine camp life, in this case collecting ice and water in a kettle.

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Hundreds of photographs — works of fine art as well as images documenting significant news events — have been given to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum by Isaac “Ike” Lagnado, a member of the Class of 1971. The most recent gifts, received by the College in 2011 and 2012, are the latest in a series of donations Lagnado has made to the College and to museums around the country.

Isaac Lagnado '71

“I give artworks to institutions ranging from the Met and the Smithsonian, to smaller specialized entities,” says Lagnado, president of Tactical Retail Solutions, Inc, a consulting and market research firm in New York City and a collector of photographic prints by master photographers.

“Bowdoin’s singular mission as a teaching institution, integrating artworks into the curriculum, as well as making them available to the public has always been very compelling.”

Lagnado’s generosity, stretching back 25 years, has provided the Museum of Art with more than 500 photographs, as well as prints, drawings and other items.

“Ike Lagnado’s generous gift enables the Museum to teach the history of photography much more broadly than before,” says Joachim Homann, the Museum’s curator.

“Among his donations are remarkable works of fine arts photography, such as the portfolio by Sugimoto, that resonates with our existing collection in exciting ways. Also included are excellent examples of photojournalism that in the context of an academic art museum raise important questions about the documentary character of photography.

“I can’t wait to share this rich new resource with faculty and students at Bowdoin. We will use it as a catalyst for new forms of object based inquiry in a wide variety of academic departments.”

Museum of Art Curator Joachim Homann

Lagnado’s contributions to the Arctic Museum comprise nearly 200 Arctic- and Antarctic-related photographs, many of them press prints used by newspapers, documenting important expeditions and initiatives that took place in the 1920s and 1930s.

“My longstanding interest in photographs led me to discover wonderful photographic documents of the Arctic expeditions,” Lagnado says.

“I was delighted that Susan [Kaplan, director of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum & Arctic Studies Center] found the photographs a useful adjunct to the Peary’s mission.”

Three series of images focus specifically on expeditions by Donald MacMillan, and there are two photographs of Robert Peary and the hut in which he lived at Cape Sabine, Ellesmere Island.

“Many of the photographs are particularly interesting because they document routine activities that take place on expeditions but that are rarely covered in official publications, such as fetching fresh water when camped on an ice island, reading instruments in subzero temperatures, tending dog teams and building igloos to protect airplanes and instruments,” says Kaplan.

Director of Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center Susan Kaplan

“The collection contains a treasure trove of information helpful in the study of the impact of Polar exploration on American popular culture. Researchers will be able to study the press photos and captions to better understand what the public learned about expeditions at a time when the print media was an important source of information about expeditions.”

Kaplan says Lagnado’s donation broadens the Arctic Museum’s collection with the addition of the 1937 Russian North Pole Air Base expedition and some of Richard Byrd’s Antarctic endeavors, and enhances the depth to the Museum’s extensive, Greenland, Labrador, and Baffin Island holdings.

The photographs, in diverse formats and taken with a variety of cameras, further strengthen the value of the museum’s collection for people interested in the history of Arctic photography.

Lagnado says he took only one art course during his time at Bowdoin — Professor Philip C. Beam’s Survey of Asian Art — but credits the  College, and the Museum of Art in particular, for imbuing him with an appreciation for the visual arts.

Lagnado has been a member of the Fellows Committee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York;  a member of the William Society at the Metropolitan Museum and a donor to the Smithsonian and the Brooklyn Museum. His personal art collection has been highlighted in Forbes magazine.