Dreaming in Black & White.

• Position: Focus on Photography

JULIEN LEVY EMERGED in the 1930s as a prominent art dealer who mounted the first exhibition in New York devoted to Surrealism. In addition to organizing shows devoted to painters and sculptors such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Leonor Fini, Alberto Giacometti, and Yves Tanguy, Levy boldly put on display the photographs of Paul Strand, Man Ray, Brassai, Andre Kertdsz, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, among many others. Together with photographer Berenice Abbott, Levy preserved and publicized Eugene Atget's images, giving Atget the widespread American reputation that influenced generations of photographers.

Levy operated his gallery from 1931-49, mounting photos at a time when the medium rarely was shown in galleries and almost never in museums. Moreover, he often was the first to present photographs by many artists now considered the most creative and influential of their time, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Lee Miller, to whom he gave their first solo exhibitions.

In celebration of the centenary of his birth, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has mounted "Dreaming in Black-and-White," which includes over 200 images (some on display for the first time in five decades) and works by more than 60 photographers exhibited by Levy, among them American masters Walker Evans, Man Ray, Charles Sheeler, Ralph Steiner, and Joseph Cornell, as well as lesser-known artists like Thurman Rotan and Luke Swank. Levy's international interests are represented as well. He traveled to France and Germany in search of the most interesting photographs by artists of his day, such as Cartier-Bresson and Moholy-Nagy. His gallery also showed works by the 20th-century master Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Levy developed a relationship with the painter Frida Kahlo, who was the subject of a series of Levy's own photographs.

"Julien Levy's love of photography was a lifelong devotion, so it is especially gratifying to celebrate his centenary with this choice selection of photographs.... His gallery was a driving force during one of the most dynamic periods in American art history, and he was a key figure in shifting the cultural avant-garde from Paris to New York," says Ann d'Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "A list of the artists to whom Levy gave their first New York exhibitions illustrates what a remarkable eye and mind he had...