Shunk-Kender

Shunk-Kender is the artistic collaboration of Harry Shunk and János Kender, who worked together largely from 1958 to 1973.^[1][2]

Artistic duo

Shunk and Kender were based initially in Paris and later in New York City.^[3] They collaborated with many artists including Yves Klein (on "Leap into the Void" (1960)),^[4][5][6] Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Eva Hesse, Alexander Calder, Man Ray, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and around 400 others.^[1]

They "were hired as a team by artists and dealers to record events from routine gallery openings to major conceptual happenings." They attributed their work to the pair of them rather than individually.^[1]

Disbanding

When they disbanded in 1973, Kender gave Shunk control of the joint material, and Shunk continued working with photography for a further 30 years.^[1]

Publications

• Shunk-Kender – Art Through the Eye of the Camera (1957–1983). Paris: Xavier Barral, 2019. ISBN 978-2365112369.
  • Shunk-Kender – L'art sous l'objectif (1957–1982). Paris: Xavier Barral, 2019. ISBN 978-2365112147.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

• Art on Camera: Photographs by Shunk-Kender, 1960–1971, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015^[7]

Group exhibitions

• Performing for the Camera, Tate Modern, London, 2016^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

Collections

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated the Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photography Collection—more than 200,000 prints, negatives and other photographic material—to a consortium of five art institutions:^[1] Centre Pompidou in Paris (10,000 prints),^[13] Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles ("183,000 items, including a near-complete set of 19,000 prints, 12,000 contact sheets, 126,000 negatives, and 26,000 color transparencies and slides"),^[14] Museum of Modern Art in New York City, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (around 2,300 images documenting Christo and Jeanne-Claude and their epic installation works),^[15] and Tate in the UK (305 works).^[16] As of 2013^[update] the Foundation retained roughly 25,000 Shunk-Kender works.^[1]