Coney Island Photographs

Open At Brooklyn Museum

 

2col luna park

Irving Underhill (1872–1960), “Luna Park and Surf Avenue, Coney Island, 1912,” gelatin dry glass plate negative, Brooklyn Museum/Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection.

Revised for date

MUST RUN 11/23

CONEY ISLAND PHOTOGRAPHS TO OPEN NOV. 28 IN NYC w/1 cut

avv/gs set 11/12 #719255

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — An exhibition of more than 50 photographs from the Brooklyn Museum’s holdings are being presented in “Goodbye Coney Island?”

The exhibit traces the evolution of this fabled part of New York over the past 125 years. Coney Island has undergone many transformations since it first became a popular resort in the Nineteenth Century and a prospective redevelopment plan may yet again change this section of Brooklyn. The exhibit is on view through April 6 in the Brooklyn Museum’s Visible Storage-Study Center of the Luce Center for American Art.

“Goodbye Coney Island?” presents images that depict the area’s early life and its landmarks and attractions from the 1870s to the present, include the Oriental Hotel, Steeplechase, Luna Park, the beach and boardwalk, and the classic Thunderbolt roller-coaster. The exhibit includes photographs by Lynn Butler, Breading Way, George Bradford Brainerd and Stephen Salmieri, among others.

About a third of the photographs on view are contemporary prints of digitally scanned late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century glass-plate negatives from the Brooklyn Museum collection.

This exhibition is organized by Patrick Amsellem, the museum’s associate curator of photography.

Brooklyn Museum is at 200 Eastern Parkway. For information, 718-638-5000 or www.brooklynmuseum.org.