Cleveland Museum of Art Showcases 19th-Century French Photography Alongside Manet & Morisot

The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) presents 'France in the Time of Manet and Morisot', a free exhibition of approximately 50 photographs from its own collection, on view from May 10 to August 23, 2026, in the Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries. Curated by Barbara Tannenbaum, the museum's curator of photography and chair of prints, drawings, and photographs, the show complements the major ticketed exhibition 'Manet & Morisot' (on view through July 5, 2026), which explores the artistic exchange between Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot. The photography exhibition provides a visual context for the era, capturing the social, political, and cultural transformations of 19th-century France, including modernization, urbanization, and the rise of photography as a new art form. Featured photographers include Nadar, Édouard Baldus, Charles Marville, André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, Étienne Carjat, Gustave Le Gray, Félix Thiollier, Adolphe Braun, and Guglielmo Marconi, among others. Highlights include Nadar's portrait of his wife Ernestine, Baldus's architectural studies of Paris landmarks, Marville's documentation of the city's transformation under Baron Haussmann, and Disdéri's carte-de-visite innovations. The exhibition also includes photographs of celebrities and public figures, such as Sarah Bernhardt, reflecting the rise of celebrity portraiture. Tannenbaum noted that the show offers a compelling portrait of a society in transition, available only in Cleveland.