The Marvins Family Collections

In 1985, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Houston's Kaye Marvins Photography portrait studio, Kaye and Sonia Marvins donated a collection of portraits assembled by their son Michael and MFAH curator Anne Wilkes Tucker. Expanded in honor of the studio's 50th anniversary, the Sonia and Kaye Marvins Portrait Collection features work by artists as diverse as Edward Weston and Clarence White, Lotte Jacobi and Heinrich Kühn, and Edward Curtis and Irving Penn, to name but a few. Sonia had long been a collector of cased daguerreotype, ambrotype, and tintype portraits from the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s; in 2003 and 2004 she donated some 200 examples that remain the core of the Museum's holdings in this area. Michael and his wife, Michele (Mike and Mickey), are donating their own collection, which is rich in fine prints of classic photographs from the 19th century to the present, as well as in less-familiar images that caught Mike's eye and imagination.