As the Woodman Family Foundation’s Collections Researcher, I spend a good amount of my working hours digging around libraries and special collections scattered throughout New York City. This aspect of my work often doubles as an impromptu tour of many of New York’s most inspiring and photographed institutions, from the neoclassical façade of the Low Memorial Library at Columbia University to the chandeliered reading rooms of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

I believe the artists of the Woodman Family Foundation were equally as inspired by this bustling and beautiful metropolis as I am. In 1979, Francesca Woodman took up residence in the Big Apple and was later followed by George and Betty Woodman in 1980, who divided their time between New York, Boulder, Colorado and Antella, Italy. In the late 1970s, Francesca Woodman utilized the massive marble lions outside of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in several of her photographs, giving her model not only an impromptu seating option but two very stoic New Yorker co-stars. In George Woodman’s photographs Five Cases of Classicism and Psyche, Amor and Sara, the artist not only highlights his abiding interest in the classic art historical canon but his interest in the city’s particularly inspiring institutions as well. New York is not merely a background for either father or daughter. As with many artists before and after the Woodmans, New York City was not only home, but muse.