Celebrate the Betty Freeman Centennial 💯🎂
The great patron of modern music was also a very fine photographer.
"A camera is like a golf club: this inert thing until you use it."
Her 1988 portrait of Alfred Brendel
Celebrate the Betty Freeman Centennial 💯🎂🎉
"She was our Prince Esterhazy, & L.A. was her Grand Palais where, instead of Haydn, the likes of Boulez, Birtwistle, & Lachenmann displayed their wares."
- Russell Platt
📷 With John Cage
Betty Freeman
John Adams rehearsing at Royce Hall, UCLA
February 1989
#Freeman100
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough by Betty Freeman
bromide fibre print, August 1988
@NPGLondon
#Freeman100
André Previn by Betty Freeman, 1988
#Freeman100
"Beverly Hills Housewife"
David Hockney depicts Betty Freeman in her Los Angeles home in 1967. Freeman built an impressive modern art collection, including works by Still, Rothko & Lichtenstein, but then pivoted to commissioning new works of music.
#Freeman100
John Adams & Morton Feldman by Betty Freeman
"I like complexity, challenge, ambiguity, abstraction."
#Freeman100
Betty Freeman
Virgil Thomson at home
"I don’t know that many people, but all of us keep the little flame inside, & it keeps going, & there’s no reason why it should go out just because it doesn’t reach the majority of the people."
#Freeman100
Terry Riley by Betty Freeman, 1995
Freeman commissioned Salome Dances for Peace, Parts II and V, for the Kronos Quartet in 1986
#Freeman100
Harry Partch by Betty Freeman
"Outside of grandchildren, I photograph almost exclusively composers because I consider them the most important people in the world, much more important than any politician."
John Cage by Betty Freeman
"The more I like their music the better the photograph."
#Freeman100
James Tenney by Betty Freeman
"I like contemporary clothes; I like Armani, Prada, Gucci… Oh no, my goodness this is music of my times. My music."
#Freeman100
Betty Freeman
Merce Cunningham & John Cage at home
"True Love Forever"
#Freeman100
David Hockney
Crayon Drawing of Betty Freeman, February 1, 1994
"From the first grants she gave in the 1960s, Freeman’s focus was always the people she supported above anything else."
- Victoria Miguel
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