David Kronn’s collection is raising our sights

David Kronn is gradually donating his invaluable, acquired photographs to the IMMA, says Richard Fitzpatrick.

COLLECTOR David Kronn has begun periodically donating his photographs to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). Kronn, a medical doctor, is Irish but lives in New York. He built the collection over 20 years and will donate until the entire collection is housed in the museum.

“I’m very proud to work with IMMA,” he says. “I’m delighted the collection will stay together. What’s disappointing is when families inherit collections; they often break them into various parts. A collection is more than a sum of its parts.” In the second of his “promised gifts,” in an exhibition called ‘Second Sight’, at IMMA’s Garden Galleries, 50 images will be on display until November. This follows a 2011 show, ‘Out of the Dark Room’. Kronn’s collection in ‘Second Sight’ sits alongside contemporary images from IMMA’s international archives, including work by Amelia Stein and Paul Seawright.