John P. Jacob

• Illustration — Recollecting a Culture: Photography and the Evolution of a Socialist Aesthetic in East Germany, 1999. Since the mid-1980s, Jacob has worked with artists in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, guest-curating exhibitions for institutions in the United States and Europe, including the Liget Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, and the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle (Saale), Germany. From 1986 to 1989, he was supported by grants from the Soros Foundations, Hungary and USSR. Émigré writer Jerzy Kosinski contributed an introductory statement to the exhibition Out of Eastern Europe: Private Photography (1987), describing the work presented as "the penultimate art of spiritual confrontation". Jacob's exhibition The Missing Picture: Alternative Contemporary Photography in the Soviet Union (1990) was the first one-person exhibition of Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov in the US, accompanied by a parallel exhibition of works by four young Soviet photographers inspired by him. Recollecting a Culture: Photography and the Evolution of a Socialist Aesthetic in East Germany (1999), commemorating the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, presented the archive of the FotoKino Verlag, publisher of the GDR's professional photography periodical, Fotografie, with works dating from 1929 to 1989. The American photographer and theorist Diane Neumaier, in her history of Soviet non-conformist photography, credited Jacob's work as foundational to that of later historians such as herself. His essay "After Roskolnikov: Russian Photography Today," edited by Neumaier for the College Art Association's Art Journal, critically examined the impact of Western attention, including his own, on the art of post-Perestroika Russia.

Jacob has been an arts administrator since the 1990s. He became director of exhibitions for the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University in 1992, and was named executive director in 1993. Jacob's exhibitions for the PRC include There is No Eye, a retrospective of photographer/musician John Cohen (2002), and Facing Death: Portraits from Cambodia’s Killing Fields (with Robert E. Seydel, 1997). Other exhibitions Jacob curated for the PRC explored the intersections of photography with dance and music, including the first presentation of photographs by Lou Reed. In 2003, Jacob was named founding director of the Inge Morath Foundation by Morath's husband, playwright Arthur Miller, and daughter, film-maker Rebecca Miller, and in 2014 facilitated the acquisition of the Morath archive by the Beinecke Library at Yale University and a collection of her master prints by the Yale University Art Gallery. From 2011 to 2015, he served as Program Director for the Magnum Foundation's Legacy Program, and as contributing editor for Esopus (magazine) re-created early Magnum distributions, in a series entitled "Analog Recovery," from the vast Magnum archive. He is presently McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Among Jacob's exhibitions for SAAM, the Art Newspaper ranked Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs the first most visited photography exhibition and the ninth most visited art exhibition worldwide for 2019, with 1,677,000 attendees; and it ranked Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen the thirteenth most visited art exhibition, with 1,132,800 attendees. Jacob is married to Noriko Fuku, professor and director of the Art Communication Research Center at the Kyoto University of Art and Design (semi-retired 2017). Jacob's curatorial projects with Fuku include Patti Smith & Friends: Drawings by Patti Smith, Polaroids by Oliver Ray, and Photographs by Michael Stipe (2002), for the Museum Eki, Kyoto, and Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent (2007), for the PhotoEspaña photography festival, Madrid. The exhibition traveled throughout Europe and to the National Museums of Japan in Tokyo and Osaka. Jacob's papers and the archive of the Riding Beggar Press are held by the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

• James Presley Ball and Robert S. Duncanson: An African American Artistic Collaboration. Co-curator with Eleanor Harvey and Jill Rothschild. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2023. • Carrie Mae Weems: Looking Forward, Looking Back. Co-curator with Saisha Grayson. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2023. • Welcome Home: A Portrait of East Baltimore, 1975–1980, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2021. • New on View: Dawoud Bey and William H. Johnson. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2020. • Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2018. • Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2018. • Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2016. • No Mountains in the Way: Photographs from the Kansas Documentary Survey, 1974. Coordinator for Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2016. • Willie Alexander: Wallworks. Co-curator with Noriko Fuku. Esopus Space, New York, 2012. • Erich Hartmann: New York Stories, 1946–57. Co-curator with Anna Patricia Kahn. Amerika Haus, Munich, Germany, 2012. • Inge Morath: First Color. Magnum Photos Gallery, Paris, France, 2009. • Well Disposed and Trying to See: Inge Morath & Arthur Miller in China. University of Michigan Art Museum, Ann Arbor, 2008. • Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent. Co-curator with Noriko Fuku. European Tour: PHotoESPAÑA / Museo ICO, Madrid, Spain, traveled 2007–2009. Japanese Tour: New National Art Centre, Tokyo, traveled 2010–2012. • Eye in the World / The World in Me: Photographs by Peter Granser, Laura McPhee, Selina Ou, and Kiriko Shirobayashi. Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao, China, 2006. • Chinese Encounters: Words and Photographs by Inge Morath & Arthur Miller. Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao, China, 2005. • The Road to Reno: Photographs by Inge Morath. Chicago Cultural Center, 2005 Traveled 2005–09. • There is No Eye: Photographs by John Cohen. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 2002. • Recollecting a Culture: Photography and the Evolution of East German Socialism. Selections from the FotoKino Archives, 1947–1990. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1999. • Patti Smith & Friends, Drawings by Patti Smith, Polaroids by Oliver Ray, and Photographs by Michael Stipe. Co-curator with Noriko Fuku. Museum Eki, Kyoto, Japan, 1999. • Facing Death: Portraits from Cambodia’s Killing Fields. Co-curator with Robert E. Seydel. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1997. • Chimæra: Aktuelle Photokunst aus Mitteleuropa. Co- curator with T.O. Immisch. Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle, Germany, 1997. • Extended Play: Photographs, Video, Fashion Design, and Works on Paper by Musicians (Willie Alexander, Laurie Anderson, Peter Blegvad, John Cohen, Kevin Coyne, Chris Cutler, Kim Gordon, Mike Gordon, Tony Levin, Eric Meza, Lou Reed, Vernon Reid, Patti Smith, and Sandra Stark). Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1997. • Matthias Leupold: Fahnenappell & Gartenlaube. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1995. • Photographs by Dennis Hopper: 1961–1967. Co-curator with Robert E. Seydel. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1994. • Return and Exile: Sylvia Plachy's Photographs from Central Europe and Susan Rubin Suleiman's Budapest Diary. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1994. • Other Africas: Photographs by Max Belcher, Fazal Sheikh, and Vera Viditz-Ward. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1993. • Virginia Beahan & Laura McPhee: No Ordinary Land. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1992. • The Missing Picture: Boris Michailov. List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge, Mass., 1990. • The Missing Picture: Alternative Contemporary Photography in the Soviet Union (Vladimir Kupreanov, Ilya Piganov, Maria Serebrjakova, Alexey Shulgin). List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge, Mass., 1990. • Hidden Story: Samizdat from Hungary and Elsewhere. Co-curator with Tibor Várnagy. Franklin Furnace Archive, New York, 1990. • The Metamorphic Medium: Contemporary Photography from Hungary. Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, 1989. • Leupold/Leupold. Portland School of Art, Portland, ME, 1988. • The Photo Diary of Anna Bohdziewicz (selections from 1986–89). Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1987. • Out of Eastern Europe: Private Photography. List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge, Mass., 1987. • Second International Portfolio of Artists' Photography. Liget Galeria & Galeria 11, Budapest, Hungary, 1986. • First International Portfolio of Artists' Photography. Büro fur Kunstlerische, Trogen, Switzerland, 1983.