Tsiaras Family Photography Collection

Spanning the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the Tsiaras Family Photography Collection forms a cornerstone of the museum’s American photographic holdings. Dr. Tsiaras, a Providence-based ophthalmologist and medical professor who developed his appreciation of art while a student at Colby College, built a collection that is deeply personal. It includes works by Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, who were both his patients and, later, his friends. In addition, the couple has acquired works by key figures in American documentary, Pictorialist, Postmodernist, and landscape photography, such as Edward Steichen, James Van Der Zee, Dorothea Lange, Roy DeCarava, Clarence White, Garry Winogrand, and Andy Warhol, among others.

The Tsiaras Collection also features notable Cuban photographers such as Pedro Abascal, Arien Chang, Alejandro González, and Lissette Solórzano, and their stylistic range exemplifies the expansiveness of Caribbean photography. Highlights from the Tsiaras Collection were the focus of the major exhibition and publication Act of Sight: The Tsiaras Family Photography Collection, and this group of photographs is one of the museum’s most vibrant and widely accessed.