The exhibition Snapshot employs a unique strategy in pursuing the Contemporary Museum’s mission of rethinking traditional ideas about museums and aesthetics. Presenting photographs that may have been found in the bureau drawers of any household, Snapshot revises expectations concerning the types of works that belong in art museums and challenges assumptions regarding the manner that museums select and exhibit works of art.

Artists and arts professionals were invited to submit snapshots and to ask their colleagues to do the same, an invitation that expanded across the world with its own momentum. Every submitted photograph was accepted into the exhibition and individual participants were given permission to decide what was meant by the term "snapshot." The exhibition contains 1,000 photographs from twenty-four countries, including works by leading contemporary artists, commercial photographers, amateurs, art students, craft artists, critics, and artists working in all media with widely varied levels of experience and reputation.