The Exhibit itself
This virtual exhibit serves as further exploration into and documentation of the physical display David Muench: The Allure of Light, located on the second floor of Cline Library in Special Collections and Archives (SCA) from fall 2025 through summer 2027. The virtual exhibit is intended to give more insight about the photographs selected for the exhibit, whether that is additional context for a specific image, information about David Muench and his photography business, or insights into student curator Niko Bare’s experience curating an exhibit for SCA’s unique gallery space.
While The Allure of Light highlights a few of David Muench’s “greatest hits,” many of the images selected are not considered Muench’s most well-known. With the unique opportunity to access David Muench’s entire archival collection, it seemed only right to exhibit curator and Elizabeth M. and P. T. Reilly intern Niko Bare to showcase some of Muench’s photographs which may not have been deemed marketable by his business, but which Niko saw as having inherent artistic merit.
David Muench’s oeuvre is considered commercial photography, but The Allure of Light takes a fine art approach to exhibit curation. The David Muench Photography records document a constant tension between David Muench’s business success and his wish for his photography to break into a fine art space. While Muench gained international recognition for his commercial work, his fine art career stayed closer to home, with several small exhibits in galleries across the United States. Niko’s hope is that The Allure of Light allows for another point of view when discussing David Muench’s work by calling attention to the formal elements which appear so frequently in his pictures.
In addition to the display of Muench’s photographs in SCA’s gallery space, Niko curated a satellite exhibit in Matador at Scholar’s Corner, the coffee shop located on the first floor of Cline Library. This smaller exhibit focuses on David Muench’s long-standing relationship with the magazine Arizona Highways. It consists of 12 Arizona Highways covers featuring photographs by Muench, dating from his first contribution in 1955 to his recent induction into the Arizona Highways Hall of Fame in 2025 for the magazine’s centennial.
The EXHIBIT Curator
Niko Bare (class of 2026) is going into their final year at Northern Arizona University, pursuing a Bachelors of Fine Art in painting with minors in Museum Studies and Art History. As SCA’s 2025 Elizabeth M. and P. T. Reilly intern, they spent their summer selecting and curating David Muench’s work for David Muench: The Allure of Light. As part of the exhibit internship, Niko completed two oil paintings inspired by David Muench’s photographs: A Stay in Color Hell and An Excuse to do Plein-Air.
A Stay in Color Hell is modeled on Muench’s photograph Sandstone Vantage Point (1972), taken outside Flagstaff, Arizona. Compare Niko’s painting to Muench’s original photograph using the slider below.
An Excuse to do Plein-Air draws upon two photographs of Lomaki Pueblo: an undated image by Josef Muench titled Prehistoric Ruins of Lomaki in Wupatki Natn’l Monument, Arizona, and a 1978 picture by David Muench titled Lomaki Ruins. Josef Muench’s photograph was featured in SCA’s 2024 exhibit Timber! Northern Arizona’s Logging Legacy; Niko passed by it every day when he came to work. As he was looking through David Muench’s photographs from the Flagstaff area, Niko noticed a familiar composition in David’s image of Lomaki Pueblo. They flagged it for later use. As Niko noted, given that Josef brought David along on many of his photography trips, their image compositions and favorite locations to shoot tend to overlap. While The Allure of Light highlights only a few of these (intentional or unintentional) visual references between Josef and David’s work, surely there are more.
An Excuse to do Plein-Air emphasizes the connection between Josef and David Muench, father and son, and their shared fascination with the Southwest. While neither photograph of Lomaki Pueblo is included in the physical display for The Allure of Light, Niko’s painting is inspired by both. In addition to these reference photographs, Niko completed a watercolor sketch of Lomaki Pueblo en plein air during an internship field trip to Wupatki National Monument in preparation for his full 11×14″ oil painting.
