02/22/08
Larry Silver's images acquired by New York's Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City has acquired four of CT ASMP life member Larry Silver’s photographs from his Muscle Beach Series, 1954.
Santa Monica, California's Muscle Beach was he most famous strip of sand in the United States. A veritable open–air gymnasium-on-the-sand, the three-acre beach was flanked by the Santa Monica Municipal Pier on the north, a row of aging apartment houses and vintage refreshments stands on the east, and, of course, the Pacific Ocean on the west.
 On summer holiday afternoons, throngs of spectators gathered around a low wooden platform constructed on the sand. Comfortable settled in with picnic coolers and backrests, the crowds watched agile athletes demonstrate feats of strength and grace. Acrobats, weight lifters and bodybuilders took turns thrilling the onlookers.
Down the beach, gymnasts performed daring flips off the flying rings, or practiced one-armed swings on the high bar. And, once a year, beach goers were treated to Miss Muscle Beach and Mr. Muscle Beach contests, where the men completed with brawn and the women with beauty.
Athletic activity on the beach was year-round, and its fame spread throughout the world. Letters would arrive at their intended destination marked simply “Muscle Beach, USA.”
Silver won first prize in the Scholastic-Ansco Photography Awards in his senior year in high school and was granted a scholarship to the Art Center School, Los Angeles (1954-56). During visits to the Santa Monica Beach, Silver photographed the local weightlifters, body builders, and acrobats.
Soon, a few unfortunate incidents fueled opposition by local residents who began voicing strong opinions about the unsavory people at the beach. And then, almost overnight, it was gone.
One night in 1959, without warning, the rings and bars were cut down, and the platform dismantled. Today, it has been replaced by new and modern equipment and is once again one of California’s major attractions.
Silver’s photographs firmly set Muscle Beach into our visual memory. His work is in many museums and private collections. They are in the permanent collections of Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Brooklyn Museum of Art, ICP, George Eastman House, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the United Nations, Yale University Art Gallery and The Smithsonian Art Museum among others.
This celebrated series "Muscle Beach" (1954) and in 1997, The California Museum of Photography did a traveling exhibition of the work and was the subject of a solo exhibition at the International Center of Photography in 1985 and again in 1999 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
To begin to appreciate Westport, Connecticut photographer, Larry Silver, visit www.larrysilver.com and the gallery at Silverstein Photography. It’s a web trip to the past that is well worth taking.
(Image from Muscle Beach 1954 series, copyright Larry Silver)
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