Museums: November 2005 Archives
From what I've read, the Met's current photo show, The Perfect Medium, is an unexpected hit. My wife and I were able to drop in to see this while making a trip uptown to visit the Neue Galerie just up the street. My initial reaction upon hearing of this show's premise was what a wasted opportunity. There can be only so many shows in the Met's photo space each year and it seemed that to focus on such an odd-ball, niche topic was using up time that could be better spent on something more significant. Nevertheless, the show highlights some critical issues facing photography today, particularly digital manipulation and the use of photography as incontrovertible evidence.
The photographs are arranged by subject - spirits, mediums, supernatural auras, "ectoplasm", etc. Each subject raises a range of different issues. The spirit photography created mainly through double exposures caused a number of fraud trials - some won, some lost, that attempted to ascertain the true source of the ghostly images captured on the light sensitive papers. As a technical and scientific process, photography was - early on - seen to have an aura of objectivity but also mystery. Could the camera see things the eye could not?
The section on ectoplasm presses this further. These photographs purport to capture emanations of strange materials sprouting from various orifices. Any artistry in these photos is purely coincidental. They are attempts to make a scientific record of the occurrence, or to fake a convincingly scientific approach, though frequently wrapped up in blatantly sexual contexts.
Not that this information does anyone any good at this point, except perhaps the retired and independently wealthy, but there will be a gallery talk this morning at 11, conducted by senior research associate Mia Fineman. This talk will be repeated in 2 weeks on Dec. 13th.
Through Dec 31 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Ave
212-535-7710
$15 for adults, recommended (see, MoMA's rate increase is having an effect.)
New York City is defined by regret. Regret that I cannot experience all the great things the city has to offer, like the range of shows currently going on at the city's multitude of museums. And this is not even to touch on the gallery shows that have come and gone in the last month while I travelled here and there and buried my nose in work. But that is another post. Here's what's shakin' around the museum scene.
PS1
Stephen Shore, American Surfaces
Through Jan. 23, '06
Mount Blue Shopping Center, Farmington, Maine, July 30, 1974 by Stephen Shore
Shore discusses his work in an interview on WPS1 (supposedly. I was never able to get the interview to load.) Read the Village Voice review
MoMA
New Photography '05
Through Jan. 16, '06
Featuring the photographs of Carlos Garaicoa, Bertien van Manen, Phillip Pisciotta, and Robin Rhode, this show resuscitates a dormant tradition at MoMA. Past "New Photography" shows have acted as king maker to some of the giants of contemporary phtography. Not sure about this time around, though. Read the NY Times' review (in the Int'l Herald Tribune.)
As an aside, MoMA and the Whitney (below) used to have amazing Web sites, with significant interactive components for most major shows. All that seems to have been brushed away in the last few years and now there is more or less a simple eplanation of the show and one ore two images.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Perfect Medium
Through Dec. 31
Whitney
The New City: Sub/Urbia in Recent Photography
Through Jan. 15th, 2006
Museum of the City of New York
Mythic City, Photographs of New York by Samuel H. Gottscho, 1925-1940
Through Feb. 20, 2005
Midtown from the Queensboro Bridge, 1932 by Otto Gottscho
There will be an associated lecture on Dec. 1.
New York Changing
Douglas Levere's rephotography project, following Abbott's Changing New York.
Through Sunday, Nov 13
Contientous reviewed the work last year and The Morning News interviewed Levere about the project.
