Recently in Museums Category
Unlike the belongings of artists who fade gradually from view, which are sometimes scattered, pilfered or lost, Arbus's effects were in some ways frozen in time when she committed suicide at 48. Quickly her life began to acquire a cult status paralleling that of her photography.Whenever these "archives" show up, I'm astonished at what packrats people must have been. I'm pretty loathe to throw much away, but every time I move apartments there's an opportunity to purge. When the archives of the luminaries of my generation start showing up I wager they will be mightly thin. Or in the Google cache.
The NY Times has a review.
"New Photography" is generally limited to three or four artists, which puts pressure on the chosen few to deliver something fresh. None of this year's photographers accomplish that... You hate to be the spoiler, the insatiable art viewer constantly demanding that rush of something new. But when a show is called "New Photography 2007," you feel within your rights.New Photography 2007
Through Jan 1 2008 at MoMA
11 W 53rd St
(212) 708-9400
The School of the ICP
1114 6th Ave (at 43rd St)
Weds, Oct 10 at 7pm
(212) 857-0001
Sun Pictures to Mega Pixels
Through Nov 4th at Williamsburg Art and Historical Center
135 Broadway
Williamsburg Brooklyn
(718) 486-7372 or (718) 486-6012
There's a long and comprehensive review of the Hiroshi Sugimoto retrospective currently on view at the De Young Museum.
It is difficult to explain why Sugimoto's work is different than most photographers. I think the difference is that he leaves more space for the viewer. One of the things that I struck me when I was walking through the show at the De Young was that when I look at Sugimoto's wide range of work, he is somehow always reaching for the eternal in an inherently temporal medium.
The NY Times has reviewed the street photography show at the Met, drawn from the museum's collection which opened last month.
When artists talk about “training the eye,” they generally don’t mean doing exercises to maintain 20/20 vision. They mean honing a set of instincts, learning to see relationships among colors or objects or spaces. The title of this small but potent collection of contemporary photographs from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection describes this kind of vision another way: seeing what is “Hidden in Plain Sight.” The show focuses mostly on versions of street, rather than studio, photography.
Hidden in Plain Sight
Through Sept.3 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Ave
(212) 535-7710
Andy Grundberg reviewed the new show "Foto: Modernity in Central Europe" in this past weekend's Washington Post.
In the show's fine catalogue, curator Witkovsky asks a central question: "Why would 'new photography' take hold especially strongly in Central Europe?" His provisional answer revolves around the presence of a strong amateur photography tradition and the creation of schools that nurtured photography as a radical new instrument of expression. One could also point to Central Europe as the meeting place of constructivist ideas from the Russian avant-garde and new art movements from France and Italy such as cubism and futurism.
The exhibition is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, through Sept. 3rd and will be coming to the Guggenheim on October 10th.
Michael Kimmelman (I thought he was leaving?) has reviewed the new Stephen Shore show, Biographical Landscapes, being held at ICP.
The show is wonderful. Mr. Shore, who now teaches at Bard College, reprinted the photographs digitally, with rejuvenated colors as fresh and subtle as the day the pictures were shot. The work’s laconic eloquence speaks of an era and a nation. Its wit and affection add buoyancy to scenes of threadbare America from a moment when the country was depressed by war and years of civil unrest. Its formal rigor makes an uncanny order out of images that, at first glance, look like no place or nothing.
Interesting that the prints are new, not vintage, for the reason of "rejuvenating" the original color. How can anyone know what that means? My understanding is that color degrades relatively quickly, so it's up to memory to tell what the original color looked like. And haven't we replaced our memory with the photograph? Start chasing your tail...
Check out the NY Times' article on the LOOK magazine archive exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, if only for the amazingly bizarre Stanly Kubrick photograph accompanying it.
Willing to Be Lucky: Ambitious New Yorkers in the Pages of LOOK Magazine
Thru Jan 7 at the MCNY
1220 5th Ave at 103rd St
(212) 534-1672
Imagine the meeting where the funding for "Newton, Natchwey, LaChapelle: Men, War & Peace" show was approved. One hopes it was an inscrutably byzantine, but ingenious, argument that made the case, but realistically it was probably the bastard child of some high placed donor committee. "Wisdom of the crowd", as they say these days.
Through May 20 at Helmut Newton Foundation
Jebensstrasse 2
D - 10623 Berlin
+49 30 3186 4856
It's a joke that Time included PhotoMuse in its recent "50 Coolest Web Sites", but overlooked the new site for the Smithsonian Photography Initiative. Both sites are a bit anemic on content or instructions, but SPI shows some real promise in terms of innovative use of collaborative tagging and storytelling using archive photography. Apparently PhotoMuse will have a major new release next month.
UPDATE: More detail on the SPI from the Smithsonian's blog, Eye Level.
