CARDOZO FINE ART

Christopher Cardozo (1948–2021) was the world's foremost authority on Edward S. Curtis — author of nine books, and curator of more than 100 exhibitions across 42 countries and six continents. His life's work was devoted to the promotion, exhibition, publication, and study of Curtis's photography, bringing the legacy Curtis created in collaboration with 10,000 Native Americans to contemporary audiences around the world.

Cardozo Fine Art maintained the world's most comprehensive collection of original vintage Curtis photographs and built the most extensive Curtis exhibition program in history. Those exhibitions are estimated to have reached more viewers globally than all previous Curtis showings combined. Through books, exhibitions, lectures, and the gallery itself, Cardozo Fine Art introduced Curtis's work to well over ten million people in a single decade. For more than twenty years, the gallery also produced contemporary original Curtis photographs for exhibition and private sale.

Christopher first encountered the work of Edward Curtis in 1973, when a friend noticed the kinship between Curtis's vision and Cardozo's own sepia-toned photographs of indigenous people. He held a Bachelor of Fine Arts — awarded Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude — in photography and film, and a Juris Doctor degree. His own photographic work entered numerous public and private collections, including the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. He lectured widely on the legal and financial dimensions of art ownership, and his personal Curtis holdings were exhibited in major international museums and celebrated in two landmark monographs: Sacred Legacy: Edward S. Curtis and The North American Indian and Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks. And his last project was recreating the entire The North American Indian

His vision continues to shape everything Cardozo Fine Art does.