Robert Bergman
Over more than 50 years, largely outside the mainstream, Robert Bergman (b. 1944 in New Orleans, LA, currently dividing his time between New York City and Minnesota) has pursued a vision of advancing psychological and philosophical depth in photography and transcending the boundaries between painting and photography. In Toni Morrison’s words in her introduction to his classic 1998 book A Kind of Rapture, his color portraits are “… a master template of the singularity, the community, and the inextinguishable sacredness of the human race.”
Robert Bergman has had solo exhibitions at The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, MoMA/P.S.1 in New York, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, and Michael Hoppen Contemporary in London. Group shows include the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the Come Together: Surviving Sandy exhibition in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to the collections of the Hill Art Foundation and Agnes Gund, President Emerita, MoMA, Bergman’s work is in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The National Gallery of Art, the 21C Museum in Louisville, KY, and numerous other individual collections. His work has also been highlighted in books, magazines, and newspapers in the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany as well as on NPR and PBS. He received the Pollock- Krasner Foundation Grant in 2017.
![Portrait of a man with his eyes closed, face covered in soot, and a greying beard.](https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-001.jpg 1244w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-001-93x140.jpg 93w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-001-266x400.jpg 266w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-001-399x600.jpg 399w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-001-532x800.jpg 532w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-001-798x1200.jpg 798w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-001-1064x1600.jpg 1064w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-001-1022x1536.jpg 1022w)
![Photograph of an African American man in a striped polo shirt](https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-002.jpg 1230w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-002-92x140.jpg 92w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-002-263x400.jpg 263w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-002-395x600.jpg 395w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-002-526x800.jpg 526w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-002-789x1200.jpg 789w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-002-1052x1600.jpg 1052w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-002-1010x1536.jpg 1010w)
![Photograph of a man in a shearling coat holding a piece of wood.](https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-003.jpg 1242w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-003-93x140.jpg 93w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-003-266x400.jpg 266w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-003-399x600.jpg 399w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-003-531x800.jpg 531w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-003-797x1200.jpg 797w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-003-1063x1600.jpg 1063w, https://hillartfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BER-RO-003-1020x1536.jpg 1020w)