'Exposure: The Female Nude in Photography' on exhibit at Art Museum of Sonoma County

Like many art collectors, Tom Neidecker of Santa Rosa specializes in one particular topic. For his collection, the head of a successful high-tech company has chosen photographs of female nudes.

“I know what I like,” Neidecker said. “It’s something I have always appreciated. It’s an homage to women.”

About 90 images from Niedecker’s collection of 1,200 comprise the Art Museum of Sonoma County’s current exhibit, “Exposure: The Female Nude in Photography,” which runs through Sept. 25. Rather than an anatomy lesson, it represents a short course in art history.

“You can follow the history of photography through the nude, because the nude as a subject began as soon as photography did,” said the show’s curator, John Sappington, who teaches art at Santa Rosa High School and Santa Rosa Junior College. “The same goes for technology today. At the cutting edge of any technology, you’ll often see the nude as a subject.”

Many of the images in the show were taken by women photographers, including such photographic superstars as Imogen Cunningham, Judy Dater and Bunny Yeager, known for her pictures of famed ’50s pin-up model Bettie Page. Other notable models in the show include Marilyn Monroe and Lady Gaga.

Noted artists

In an era when even Playboy magazine has stopped publishing nude centerfolds, there might be a tendency to suspect an exhibit like this of exploitation, but it only takes a walk-through, and a look at the work by such noted photographers as Man Ray and Robert Mapplethorpe, to see that the mission of the exhibit is quite serious.

“I am a photographer and educator, so from my perspective, the test is always going be the level of intent: what’s your intention in the work,” Sappington said. “In this exhibit, there is a level of respect for the subject and a level of intellect behind the image.”

Neidecker, born in Switzerland, started a U.S. branch of his family’s company in Santa Rosa in 1982. Multi-Contact, which produces high-end electronic components, was founded in Switzerland in 1960 by his father, Rudolph Neidecker.

Neidecker currently houses his collection, which also includes 30,000 books and manuscripts, in two side-by-side residences and two smaller structures between them.

After the current exhibit, he plans to move his entire collection under one roof in Arizona, where the dryer climate will help preserve his treasures.

“I have collected art my whole life,” said Neidecker, now 61. “I think I started at 17 or 16. At that time, I was really interested in portraits on canvas. Then I collected old prints and manuscripts and maps. Then I started on surrealist art and the maestro, Salvador Dali.”

Complex images

Ultimately, Neidecker found himself drawn to photographers who used a straight-forward art form to create complex images, including Man Ray, who was influenced by Pablo Picasso. Eventually, Neidecker’s fascination with photography led him to commission a few works by photographers.

”Photographs are democratic,” Neidecker said. “They speak to everyone instantly. People want to talk about photographs, but I say, ‘Show me.’ This show has to be seen. The more you know about art, the more you learn.”

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.

When Sofia Richie chopped her hair and visited a doctor’s office recently, Us Weekly was there. Not to be outdone, People heralded Mindy McKnight as “the voice for millennial moms.” And In Touch offered an “adorable” picture of Sarah Wright Olsen’s infant napping next to a plush rabbit.

Meet the striving celebrity underclass that has risen to dominate the gossip machine. Aspiring models, third-tier reality show stars, impossible-to-place actors, YouTube vloggers and viral news subjects can now all curry coverage just by replenishing their social media accounts with photos of their babies, their butts or both. These are people you’ve probably never heard of - or have a nagging suspicion you might have, but don’t quite know why.

For the record, Richie is a teenager best known for appearing on Justin Bieber’s Instagram account (not to mention being Lionel Richie’s daughter). McKnight films hair tutorials on YouTube. And because In Touch didn’t bother to explain who Wright Olsen even is, I Googled it. Turns out that after a supporting role on the short-lived NBC sitcom “Marry Me,” she now runs a parenting blog.

Dirty laundry

These quasi-celebrities have crept onto our radar through our supermarket tabloids and Facebook news feeds, and a crop of publications has emerged to cover them, whether sincerely or satirically. The relentless Instagram gossip outpost The Shade Room airs their dirty laundry; the deliciously absurd podcast “Who? Weekly” pokes fun at their claims to fame, and Time Inc.'s shiny new digital celebrity site, Instant.me, hopes to build on their brands.

It used to be that the only way a non-recognizable person could land in the pages of the glossy celebrity magazines was to lose 100 pounds, serve as some heartwarming testimony to good-old-fashioned American values, or be murdered.

But in the early 2000s, the magazines started diversifying their coverage of Hollywood’s leading Jens and Bens with stories on the romantic dupes and plastic surgery nightmares of reality television.

Now, as the rise of social media demolishes the leverage that celebrity tabloids once had over their most famous subjects, the gossip industry keeps defining celebrity downward. (After all, no magazine can match the reach of Taylor Swift’s more than 90 million Instagram fans or Kim Kardashian West’s 47 million Twitter followers.)

When Kardashian West first rose to prominence, commentators sneered that she was “famous for nothing.” The accusation seems quaint now: Tabloids have moved on from covering reality television stars like Kardashian West to following reality TV supporting characters, former reality TV stars, friends and exes of former reality TV stars - even people who post their own family dramas straight to YouTube.

From prison to People

These days, gossip sites are also fueled by figures largely famous for doing nothing much. Jeremy Meeks, whose image went viral when Twitter swooned for his hot mug shot, has popped up on the websites of Us Weekly and People since his release from prison earlier this year. Instagram models like Richie, Sahara Ray and Bronte Blampied can milk months of coverage out of a couple of shots of themselves posing with Bieber.

And Refinery29 recently ran a photo-laden spread on the “Gucci Gang,” a group of four stylish 14-to-16-year-old Parisian girls whose central accomplishment is attracting a combined 50,000 Instagram followers. As the de facto crew leader, Angelina Woreth, put it, “It’s easy to hate us, actually, because we are not doing something; we’re not really doing anything.”

Across the web, a new gossip press further enables these lesser celebrity castes. Drama generated by the young stars of YouTube, Vine and Musical.ly churns through nimble aggregation centers like Superfame and Trending All Day. The freewheeling Guru Gossip forum cuts through the glittery facade of online beauty gurus while Get Off My Internets deflates the egos of the lifestyle-blogging set.

And The Shade Room, a social-media gossip site focusing on black celebrities, pulls in 6.1 million Instagram followers. While it posts plenty of news on known quantities (Beyoncé, Drake, Kevin Durant), it recognizes that some of the juiciest material comes from the smaller players (Tameka Harris, Karlie Redd, Keke Wyatt) who keep their names circulating on Twitter by spilling their guts on Instagram.

Then there is “Who? Weekly,” the cutting podcast in which the hosts, Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger, guide listeners through celebrity’s confounding new frontier. The podcast’s name derives from the typical reaction of a layperson to reading a noncelebrity’s name in the news. As the hosts explained in a handy primer published in July, “the subjects of gossip coverage can be divided into two categories: Whos (as in: *furrows brow* Who?) and Thems (as in: ‘Oh, them.’)”

A Who is born

On a recent episode, they take on Brittany Farrar, the ex-girlfriend of Aaron Rodgers’ little brother, Jordan Rodgers (who is now dating the “Bachelorette” star JoJo Fletcher), who recently accused Jordan of cheating in a series of Instagram posts. “Why are we still hearing about her?” Weber asked. Finger replied: “Because she wants us; she did her due diligence in making sure we talked about her.” And just like that: A Who was born.

Legacy media companies are dancing as fast as they can to keep up. In May, Time Inc. debuted Instant.me, dedicated to covering the foot soldiers of social media. Instant sells its subjects - a constellation of YouTube creators, Snapchat fitness models and Instagram-famous pets - as “The New Famous.”.

But these modern fandoms produce grist for non-fans, too. There’s something deliciously surreal about monitoring the online movements of the barely famous, a class of people who are just unpolished, desperate and savvy enough to act mad, sloppy and sexy.

The fact that publications like People and Us Weekly are covering it with a straight face adds another absurd layer.

Besides, these people are assaulting our social feeds every day whether we like it or not.

Outlets like The Shade Room and “Who? Weekly” have managed to extract bits of hilarity, delight and shame out of that arid media landscape.

They have intuited what the traditional tabloids don’t quite get: The pursuit of celebrity has emerged as a grand tabloid narrative in and of itself.