Kimbell Art Museum Presents First Photography Exhibition with Paris Bibliothèque Nationale Masterworks

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth will host "Photography’s First Century: Masterworks from the Bibliothèque nationale de France" from October 4, 2026, to January 17, 2027, in the Renzo Piano Pavilion. This marks the museum's first photography exhibition. Organized with France's national library in Paris, the show celebrates the bicentennial of photography's invention. It surveys over 150 images spanning photography's first hundred years, from the 1840s rise of the daguerreotype and calotype to modernism between the World Wars. Featured artists include Henri Le Secq, Gustave le Gray, Félix Tournachon (Nadar), Édouard Baldus, Louis-Émile Durandelle, Eugène Atget, André Kertész, Rogi André, Man Ray, and Brassaï. The exhibition traces exploration and discovery in the medium's early history.