A donation from the Herb Ritts Foundation to The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In a recent release by The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a donation made by the Herb Ritts Foundation will allow the construction of the first photography-exclusive gallery at the museum.

From the Museum of Fine Arts' Press Room:

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) announced that the Herb Ritts Foundation has given $2.5 million to its Campaign, Building the New MFA. In honor of this gift, the MFA will create the Herb Ritts Gallery for Photography—the first gallery devoted exclusively to photography in Museum history.

Herb Ritts (CameraArts February/March 2003) was an acclaimed photographer for Rolling Stone, Interview, Vanity Fair, and Vogue; he created many celebrity portraits that have become famous in their own right, such as Jack Nicholson grinning into a magnifying glass, and the gender-bending photographs of Cindy Crawford in lingerie and K.D. Lang in male drag; and he was dedicated to many AIDS/HIV related causes until his death on December 26, 2002.

Additionally, the Herb Ritts Foundation, based in Los Angeles, California, is giving 189 Herb Ritts photographs to the Museum, adding to the gift of 45 works that photographer Herb Ritts made to the MFA in 2000. With this gift, the MFA will have one of every print from the exhibition, Herb Ritts: Work, in its collection. Herb Ritts: Work, the first full-scale retrospective of Ritts’ iconic photographs organized by and on view at the Museum in 1996/1997, was one of the ten most highly attended exhibitions in the MFA’s history.

Ritts may prove to be among the first photographers of his time to have a Museum Gallery named after him. It is an honor, but all too unfortunate that his time will have to go on without him.