New York Historical acquires Bill Cunningham archive

During his lifetime, Bill Cunningham, inveterate chronicler of fashion high and low who travelled the city by bike in his signature blue jacket, was notably reluctant to share with the public his vast storehouse of photographic images. He once remarked, only half in jest, that he would sooner see it burn.

- RUTH LA FERLA

So one may well wonder what Cunningham, a New York Times photographer who died in 2016 at age 87, would have made of the news that the New York Historical has acquired his archive, giving a permanent home to his tens of thousands of photographs, negatives, slides, contact sheets and memorabilia, putting an end to years of speculation about the fate of his work.

The collection had been managed by Patricia Simonson, Cunningham's niece and co-executor, and had for years been stored in rows of files and boxes in the photographer's studio above Carnegie Hall. It will reside in the Tang Wing for American Democracy, set to open next year, and be available to generations of researchers and scholars.

Louise Mirrer, the president of the New York Historical, was struck by the variety of the collection.