International tour launched in 2019 in Los Angeles, followed by Switzerland and Portugal.

Co-curated with Sean Corcoran.

Stanley Kubrick was just 17 years old when he sold his first photograph to the pictorial magazine Look in 1945. In his photographs, many unpublished, Kubrick trained his camera on his native city, drawing inspiration from the nightclubs, street scenes, and sporting events that made up his first assignments, and capturing the pathos of ordinary life with a sophistication that belied his young age. Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs featured some 130 photographs by Kubrick from the Museum’s Look Magazine archive, an unparalleled collection that includes 129 photography assignments and more than 12,000 negatives from his five years as a staff photographer. For any fan of Kubrick’s films, the exhibition explored a formative phase in the career of one of the 20th century’s most renowned motion picture directors. Accompanied by a 328-page book.

Working with co-curator Sean Corcoran, Mr. Albrecht conceived the idea for the show and developed its themes, selected all photographs, wrote exhibition text, and worked with the design team.

>See exhibition catalog

Press
Coverage in numerous international print and digital sources, including the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, Independent (UK), and L’Oeil de la Photographie (France)

“Through a Different Lens is an extraordinary chronicle of Kubrick’s evolving aesthetic…” Dante A. Ciampaglia, Daily Beast, May 9, 2018

Credits
Exhibition and graphic designer: Marissa Martonyi
Book design: Pure+Applied
Photographer: Brad Farwell and Filip Wolak (first image)

What makes a city livable? Is it public art, tree-shaded plazas, efficient street design, or the dynamic mix of old and new buildings? To the Municipal Art Society (MAS), the answer has been all of the above and more. This exhibition, presented at New York’s Center for Architecture, celebrated MAS’s 125th anniversary. Over its history, that organization has educated and inspired New Yorkers in all five boroughs to engage in the betterment of their city. It has addressed the vexing issues facing successive generations of New Yorkers, from transportation to historic preservation, and some of its efforts have had national ramifications.

All the while, MAS has advanced its mission through collaboration, a necessary mode of action to change any complex, modern city. Zelig-like, MAS has appeared in different guises throughout New York’s 20th- and 21st-century histories. It has conceived with, promoted alongside, and sometimes fought against the actors who shape the city: powerful government leaders, important institutions, and colorful individuals. Together, they have made New York New York, and MAS’s story is, in effect, the story of modern metropolitan life itself.

Mr. Albrecht conceived the concept of the show, developed its themes, and, working with MAS staff and consultants, selected images, wrote exhibition text, and worked with the design team.

Credits
Exhibition designer: Abbott Miller/Pentagram
Photographer: Brad Farwell

Co-curated with Thomas Mellins

Mexico Modern explored two decades of dynamic cultural exchange between Mexico and the United States. It began around 1920, when the armed phase of a long and bitter revolution in Mexico ushered in new cultural ideals and programs, and continued into the mid-1940s, when contemporary Mexican art entered the mainstream in the United States. The exhibition underscored that art movements rarely conform to national borders; nor do they result from the efforts of artists alone. Transnational networks of individuals and institutions that seek, champion, and interpret great—often radically new—works of art are essential. Never has this been more the case than during the early 20th-century’s “Mexican moment.”

Widely acknowledged as a critical chapter in the history of 20th-century art, the rise of modernism in Mexico was activated by artists, museum curators, gallery owners, journalists, and publishers both in Mexico and the United States. These figures created and promoted an art that pioneered a synthesis of indigenous traditions, both ancient and contemporary, and international, modernist aesthetics. Chief among the artists who contributed to the creation of the “Mexican moment” were “los tres grandes”: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Other important artists were Frida Kahlo, Miguel Covarrubias, and Jean Charlot; American jeweler William Spratling; and photographers Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. Accompanied by a 176-page book.

Working with Thomas Mellins, Mr. Albrecht conceived the idea of the exhibition, developed its themes, selected artifacts, wrote exhibition text, and worked with the design team.

>See exhibition catalog

Press
“By examining Mexican modern art through the lens of transnational connections, Mexico Modern: Art, Commerce, and Cultural Exchange not only explores a conversation between two countries and their vibrant artistic scenes but also contributes to a complicated and refined narrative about the grandeur of Mexican art.”
Cristóbal Jácome-Moreno, College Art Association Reviews, December 22, 2017

Credits
Exhibition and graphic designer: Harry Ransom Center/University of Texas at Austin
Exhibition video producer: Harry Ransom Center/University of Texas at Austin
Catalog graphic design: WIGEL, Munich

Co-curated with Steven H. Jaffe

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, New York City’s artists and illustrators were enlisted in the war effort.  Many of them worked for the federal government’s new Division of Pictorial Publicity. Posters and Patriotism: Selling World War I in New York examined the outpouring of posters, flyers, magazine art, sheet music covers, and other mass-produced images created by these New Yorkers to stir the American public to wartime loyalty, duty, and sacrifice.

From the outbreak of the European conflict in 1914, however, New York had also been a city at war with itself—a place where debates about ethnic and racial loyalty, pacifism, the right to side with France, Belgium, and England or Germany, and the very meaning of patriotism spawned impassioned art for a mass audience. In rediscovering a wartime dialogue between images of conformity and dissent, Posters and Patriotism showcased over 60 examples from the World War I poster collection donated to the Museum by railroad executive and financier John W. Campbell (1880-1957) in 1943, most being exhibited for the first time, as well as the work of defiant artists in such colorful publications as The Masses, The Fatherland, and Mother Earth.

Mr. Albrecht collaborated with co-curator Steven H. Jaffe to develop the show’s themes, select all artifacts, write exhibition text, and work with the exhibition and graphic designer.

Credits
Exhibition designer: Perrin Studio
Photographer: Rob Stephenson