Fifty-four of Peter Pollack's photographs were selected to hang alongside Van Gogh's paintings and drawings at the 1949-1950 Van Gogh retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition was the most comprehensive showing of van Gogh's oeuvre presented in the United States to date, and over 90% of the works on view had never traveled to American soil. Vincent's nephew lent forty-eight of the ninety-two paintings displayed.

The exhibition was immensely successful, attracting over 300,000 visitors in Chicago alone. The show was a boon to Peter Pollack's career as well. Although he did not publish a book of the photographs as he had originally intended, the images were published in a 1949 issue of LIFE Magazine and Pollack gave many lectures supplemented by his photographs in which he discussed Vincent Van Gogh and his work.

"What I succeeded in getting was a photographic document of subjects Vincent saw," Peter Pollack later explained, "but how this stormy, foremost exponent of Impressionist painting transformed the natural image, is the greatness of Van Gogh's art."

1. The Art Institute of Chicago. Vincent Van Gogh: Greatest American Showing. Pamphlet. 1950.
2. The Art Institute of Chicago. Invitation. 1950.
3. Shipping Van Gogh's Paintings. Photograph. 1950.
4. Opening Day. Photograph. 1950.
5. Peter Pollack's Photographs at the Met. Photograph. ca. 1950.
6. The Art Institute of Chicago. "Greatest American Exhibition of Van Gogh's Works Arrives from New York January 20th to be Shown at The Art Institute of Chicago." News release. January 20, 1950.
7. Daniel Catton Rich and Theodore Rousseau. Van Gogh, Paintings and Drawings: A Special Loan Exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1940-1950. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, c1949.
8. "Vincent Van Gogh: Man and Artist." Lecture announcement. Chicago: National Lecture Bureau, ca. 1955.