One of my favorite paintings is the self portrait of this artist which I first saw at the Louvre in 1986. This is a sensitive and slightly handsome young man executed in a mastery of the portrait style of that era, 1746, the year Goya was born. Filling the lower right hand quadrant of the painting, the young man holds up to the viewer an academic charcoal drawing of a male nude. At the time I first saw it I was studying life drawing in New York and the inclusion of this figure drawing would have appealed to my personal interests. But I have also had a life long fascination with tromp l’oeil painting and so I was thrilled to find a painting with a tromp l’oeil drawing. From a certain distance it is almost impossible to accept the drawing as anything other than a work on paper. (On closer view it can be seen that the painting’s varnish has yellowed slightly and that the paint surface has crackled. Oh, well!)
Adding to the charm of the drawing is the clearly indicated horizontal fold across the center width of the paper, with beautifully stated, but subtle, highlight and shadow, and the curled left side of the paper which casts an oblique shadow over the body of the drawing. In the great hallway just outside this gallery there are two charcoal male nudes by John Singer Sargent which can be used for ready reference of Melendez’ mastery of the tromp l’oeil drawing.
As a portrait in a particular style there is a wealth of detail that is absolutely thrilling; the subtle indication of pattern in the dark ground, the lace work on his cuffs, and in the play of light over the surface of his sensitive nails and fingertips: his nails have the luster of pearls. But the most exciting passage in this painting, which this exhibition allows us to see close up as if face to face with the man, is the artist’s eyes; looking into his eyes is like looking into the eyes of a living person; truly they are the windows into his soul. I love painting and drawing, in any style, whose only raison d’être is the artist’s statement: I did this because I can do it and I can do it better than anyone else. And I equally love it when a person of great accomplishment is appropriately arrogant in regard to his talent. Bravo, Senor Melendez!
But the exhibition is not about his mastery of portraiture or charcoal drawing, it is about his mastery of the tromp l’oeil still life: Americans would be more familiar with the work of Harnet, Peto, and the many Brothers Peale. Melendez studied at the Spanish Academy, where his father was a professor …one is reminded of the young Picasso and his father. Unfortunately the father fell out of favor and was removed from his position and in the process the son was expelled. Afterward Melendez made four appeals to the crown to gain the position of court painter. Except for a series of still life decorations, included in this exhibition, he was never granted official status. He died in a state of poverty and relatively unknown.
Little more is known about him. It is not known when his paintings were made or for whom. And the curious thing about the paintings seen here is that they all appear to have issued from the same time…there is no early, middle or late development in the work …it is all of a piece. Melendez was taught a technique, he mastered that technique, and apparently he painted in exactly that technique for the whole of his life. Again I was reminded of the young Picasso, who, having mastered a technique, threw it off in an effort to take Western art into a new era yet with constant references to what it had gone before.
As a rule I dislike the work of artists who achieve a signature style and then spend the rest of their lives knocking out work for the marketplace in that same manner …Stuart Davis and Mark Rothko come immediately to mind. But I do make exceptions and Melendez has always been one of them made palatable because there are so few of his works (there are thirty in this exhibition). They are few and far between in museums. And that is to the good: one has a limited patience for admiring repetitive work especially paintings in which we see each juicy seed of a pomegranate and very especially paintings in which we see a half dozen pomegranates split open to display their thousands of luscious seeds: he does go to extremes! In fact, there is a real affinity here to the compulsiveness of outsider art.
These are wonderful paintings each with a carefully made composition built around objects such as serving vessels of pottery, glass, copper and silver, with thoughtful arrangements of the fruits, a flawless balance of colors, of light and shadow, in fact a mastery of light and shadow, and suffused overall by that wonderful golden Spanish light. Despite the politics and the peccadilloes from which he must have suffered, each painting indicates his persistent declaration of his love of the nurturing fruits of the earth and of his irrepressible desire to paint. I am a strong believer that the desire to paint is as inherently human as the desire to sing and to dance. Through it all Melendez painted. And how! Bravo!
On the museum web site page the link to the Boston Globe review has five or six photographs of the paintings.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=8517
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Harry Callahan, American Photographer. At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
I made a quick trip up to Boston last week specifically to see this exhibition of Harry Callahan’s photographs. It was only just over a year ago that his work began to make a lasting impression on me and so strong is that impression that I think no trip to see his work is too far afield. When planning the trip it seemed serendipitous that the museum was also showing the work of Melendez, a painter who’s work I have long enjoyed. As it turned out, seeing the two exhibitions together has helped me more clearly define the difference between painting and photography.
When we look at a painting we have a dual perception: a perception of the surface and a perception of depth created on the surface. While there is no deep picture space in Melendez’ still lifes, in the shallow space he created there is nonetheless an almost palpable sense of three dimensions. By contrast, despite the photographer’s ability to capture aerial and linear perspective, to control depth of field, and to play soft focus against hard edges, when we look at a photograph we have only a perception of surface. This comes from the fact that the camera makes its record with but one eye.
I was also reminded once again of Cezanne’s work. Cezanne was one of the first painters to make the painting an object in and of itself. At the time Cezanne was painting photography was coming into its own and many painters were asking: what can painting do that photography cannot. For Cezanne the answer was the interplay between the two perceptions and especially the finish of the surface. Because a Harry Callahan photograph is also presented as an object in and of itself I believe he must have asked: what can photography do that painting cannot. Knowing that he worked with Moholy Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes I think it is a safe surmise that he was interested in creating patterns with light and shadow on a neutral surface. Thus in his photographs he is not expressing his feelings about the subject but his fascination with the possibilities of the medium. (Again this is distinct from Ansel Adams’ slavish devotion to photographic technique.) But where Moholy Nagy was concerned only with the formal values, Harry Callahan added a deeper and more human context to his work.
One positive aspect of this exhibition is the opportunity to see the photographs in the sizes that the photographer chose to make them. I am a firm believer that a photograph has a correct size and that the photographer is the one who makes that determination. The most common size here is about 8 by 10, there are some at about 5 by 7, and there are many that are cropped within those two sizes…4 by 4, 6 by 6, 8 by 8, etc. There are only one or two that are larger, no more than 11 by 14, and there are two that are about 2 by 3 inches. I believe Harry Callahan most often worked with 35mm film and so I think we can deduce from his small prints that he wanted the sharpest possible images.
There is no texture to his paper, it is value free. From what I could ascertain every one was printed on a similar paper. The prints are neither glossy nor matte, somewhat like what we used to call double weight but without the texture of that paper. All of the black and white photographs are silver gelatin prints and the few color photographs are dye transfer. Perhaps some day in the near future museums will include more technical data in their photography exhibitions: if exhibitions are intended to inspire they should inspire through a discussion of materials and techniques as well as through results.
One of the amusing aspects of Callahan’s work is that he made it almost impossible to discuss his work without the example under discussion close at hand. This is a result of his choice of titles. In this exhibition we see Eleanor, 1949, Eleanor 1949, and Eleanor 1949. Others are Chicago 1949, Chicago 1949, and Chicago 1949. But despite his predilection for patterns and his choice of anonymity of subject one insight that does assert itself in his work is his love of women, not in the sense of his carousing or wanting to carouse but in his view of the feminine as mythic and essential.
There are ten Eleanor photographs in the exhibition. Eleanor was his wife. In many of the photographs she is nude. One of the photographs that makes the strongest impression is Eleanor, 1949, in which she is in the water with only her head and shoulders exposed. Her long hair streams on the surface. Her breast is seen through the water beneath the surface. Her eyes are down cast or closed. Even as a cipher without affect she is extremely feminine. The photograph is so unusual and so strong, it is one of his most iconic images, that she can only be understood as his muse. And so, through this series of photographs, Eleanor does become The Muse.
From his series of photographs taken on the street without the passers by knowing what he was doing, (all of them here are women …and each rigidly in control of her social persona), we can note again a consistent fascination with their femininity. But this can be felt as well in his Cape Cod 1974. In this we see the beach below and the sky above, a study of two grays. But the contour line of the horizon dips down in the center and beyond there is the very slightest indication of a very thin, dark slit of sea. Regardless of our prior associations with the textures presented, this becomes a very sensuous and feminine presence.
One element that I also see in Callahan’s work, but which I could not study here because there were so few prints that presented the opportunity, is his tendency to make photographs that reference snapshots. That has to do with commonplace subjects and settings but with a reconfigured composition. The one photograph here that illustrates my perception is Eleanor and Barbara, 1953, in which a woman and her daughter stand on a brick roadway in front of an architectural composition. Callahan has placed them too far back into the composition for this to be a Sunday afternoon memento, but they are too forward facing to be simply incidental. There is a darkness overall as if the negative had been underexposed. I see this approach consistently in his work and in a more comprehensive exhibition I think one could spend more time developing an understanding of that aspect of his work.
The photographs are from the museum collection and from several private collectors …future benefactors we might suppose. My favorite of his photographs, Chicago, 1949, the black trees silhouetted against the gray Lake Michigan, is from the Lane Collection. (…which doesn’t surprise me: The Lane Collection is one of the finest collections of modern American art and is resident at this museum. Almost all of those artists are from the Alfred Stieglitz gallery.) The Bank of America Collection, formerly the La Salle Bank Collection; see this blog, December, 2008, has loaned all of the photographs made with multiple exposures. I think it is safe to assume that the museum has none of that series in their collection. Because Harry Callahan is one of America’s very best and most American photographers, let’s hope the benefactors make haste and step to the plate: so little of his work is on the market that the prices are not likely to go down. Their refusal to be generous, however, might have something to do with the presentation in this exhibition space, see The Herb Ritts Gallery below.
With all of the difficulties of this exhibition space in mind and considering the very high quality of the reproductions of his work in the book, Harry Callahan, the Photographer at Work, see this blog January, 2009, I believe one has a better opportunity to study and know his work through the book than in this exhibition. While this exhibition covers many years of his career it has more the nature of a sampler than of a comprehensive overview.
On the page below the link to art tattler has some of his photos as well as some of the Melendez paintings.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=8636
When we look at a painting we have a dual perception: a perception of the surface and a perception of depth created on the surface. While there is no deep picture space in Melendez’ still lifes, in the shallow space he created there is nonetheless an almost palpable sense of three dimensions. By contrast, despite the photographer’s ability to capture aerial and linear perspective, to control depth of field, and to play soft focus against hard edges, when we look at a photograph we have only a perception of surface. This comes from the fact that the camera makes its record with but one eye.
I was also reminded once again of Cezanne’s work. Cezanne was one of the first painters to make the painting an object in and of itself. At the time Cezanne was painting photography was coming into its own and many painters were asking: what can painting do that photography cannot. For Cezanne the answer was the interplay between the two perceptions and especially the finish of the surface. Because a Harry Callahan photograph is also presented as an object in and of itself I believe he must have asked: what can photography do that painting cannot. Knowing that he worked with Moholy Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes I think it is a safe surmise that he was interested in creating patterns with light and shadow on a neutral surface. Thus in his photographs he is not expressing his feelings about the subject but his fascination with the possibilities of the medium. (Again this is distinct from Ansel Adams’ slavish devotion to photographic technique.) But where Moholy Nagy was concerned only with the formal values, Harry Callahan added a deeper and more human context to his work.
One positive aspect of this exhibition is the opportunity to see the photographs in the sizes that the photographer chose to make them. I am a firm believer that a photograph has a correct size and that the photographer is the one who makes that determination. The most common size here is about 8 by 10, there are some at about 5 by 7, and there are many that are cropped within those two sizes…4 by 4, 6 by 6, 8 by 8, etc. There are only one or two that are larger, no more than 11 by 14, and there are two that are about 2 by 3 inches. I believe Harry Callahan most often worked with 35mm film and so I think we can deduce from his small prints that he wanted the sharpest possible images.
There is no texture to his paper, it is value free. From what I could ascertain every one was printed on a similar paper. The prints are neither glossy nor matte, somewhat like what we used to call double weight but without the texture of that paper. All of the black and white photographs are silver gelatin prints and the few color photographs are dye transfer. Perhaps some day in the near future museums will include more technical data in their photography exhibitions: if exhibitions are intended to inspire they should inspire through a discussion of materials and techniques as well as through results.
One of the amusing aspects of Callahan’s work is that he made it almost impossible to discuss his work without the example under discussion close at hand. This is a result of his choice of titles. In this exhibition we see Eleanor, 1949, Eleanor 1949, and Eleanor 1949. Others are Chicago 1949, Chicago 1949, and Chicago 1949. But despite his predilection for patterns and his choice of anonymity of subject one insight that does assert itself in his work is his love of women, not in the sense of his carousing or wanting to carouse but in his view of the feminine as mythic and essential.
There are ten Eleanor photographs in the exhibition. Eleanor was his wife. In many of the photographs she is nude. One of the photographs that makes the strongest impression is Eleanor, 1949, in which she is in the water with only her head and shoulders exposed. Her long hair streams on the surface. Her breast is seen through the water beneath the surface. Her eyes are down cast or closed. Even as a cipher without affect she is extremely feminine. The photograph is so unusual and so strong, it is one of his most iconic images, that she can only be understood as his muse. And so, through this series of photographs, Eleanor does become The Muse.
From his series of photographs taken on the street without the passers by knowing what he was doing, (all of them here are women …and each rigidly in control of her social persona), we can note again a consistent fascination with their femininity. But this can be felt as well in his Cape Cod 1974. In this we see the beach below and the sky above, a study of two grays. But the contour line of the horizon dips down in the center and beyond there is the very slightest indication of a very thin, dark slit of sea. Regardless of our prior associations with the textures presented, this becomes a very sensuous and feminine presence.
One element that I also see in Callahan’s work, but which I could not study here because there were so few prints that presented the opportunity, is his tendency to make photographs that reference snapshots. That has to do with commonplace subjects and settings but with a reconfigured composition. The one photograph here that illustrates my perception is Eleanor and Barbara, 1953, in which a woman and her daughter stand on a brick roadway in front of an architectural composition. Callahan has placed them too far back into the composition for this to be a Sunday afternoon memento, but they are too forward facing to be simply incidental. There is a darkness overall as if the negative had been underexposed. I see this approach consistently in his work and in a more comprehensive exhibition I think one could spend more time developing an understanding of that aspect of his work.
The photographs are from the museum collection and from several private collectors …future benefactors we might suppose. My favorite of his photographs, Chicago, 1949, the black trees silhouetted against the gray Lake Michigan, is from the Lane Collection. (…which doesn’t surprise me: The Lane Collection is one of the finest collections of modern American art and is resident at this museum. Almost all of those artists are from the Alfred Stieglitz gallery.) The Bank of America Collection, formerly the La Salle Bank Collection; see this blog, December, 2008, has loaned all of the photographs made with multiple exposures. I think it is safe to assume that the museum has none of that series in their collection. Because Harry Callahan is one of America’s very best and most American photographers, let’s hope the benefactors make haste and step to the plate: so little of his work is on the market that the prices are not likely to go down. Their refusal to be generous, however, might have something to do with the presentation in this exhibition space, see The Herb Ritts Gallery below.
With all of the difficulties of this exhibition space in mind and considering the very high quality of the reproductions of his work in the book, Harry Callahan, the Photographer at Work, see this blog January, 2009, I believe one has a better opportunity to study and know his work through the book than in this exhibition. While this exhibition covers many years of his career it has more the nature of a sampler than of a comprehensive overview.
On the page below the link to art tattler has some of his photos as well as some of the Melendez paintings.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=8636
The Herb Ritts Photography Gallery, The museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Generally I have an infallible sense of direction. In Boston I do not. I have no idea where north and west lie in that city but since I am able to get around and see the things I want to see, I don’t let it bother me. It’s a small and pleasant city just perfect for walking and one can pretty much find what he wants to see simply by turning around slowly and looking into the near distance.
The Museum of Fine Arts is at the side of the Fens and as that park is an oval I am even more directionally challenged than elsewhere in the city. Thus in discussing the Museum I need to establish an arbitrary point of orientation. I will say that the side of the museum facing Huntington Avenue, the original front and entrance, is south, the side facing the Fens is north, the new American Wing is to the east, and the parking lot and the older new wing are to the west. When entering from the old main entrance, from the south, one can pass around the Grand Stairway into a circular room that opens over head to the central rotunda. A corridor continues through to the north entrance and another makes a straight line through several galleries to the west side of the building. The Herb Ritts gallery is the last room at the end of that corridor in what was once the far west side of the original building. While I was in that gallery two women passed through and one said to the other: “I remember when this area was the cafeteria.”
When I first visited the museum in September 2006, the entrances were on the Huntington Avenue, south, side and on the West. Two years ago an entrance had been opened on the renovated north side, the south entrance was closed, and the west was still in use. Now the south entrance has been reconfigured and reopened, the north entrance is open and the west entrance is closed ….EXCEPT FOR GROUPS. Please keep that emphasis in mind!
The addition at the west side of the building opens from the street into a very large public space the full height of the building. It is clad in white marble or some such stone. To the left as one enters there is a coat room and rest rooms, there is a long hallway which passes beside the very upscale restaurant for the ladies who lunch, and parallel to that is a very large book store. At the far end of that hallway is a stairway leading down to the lower scale cafeteria on the ground floor. On the other side of this long hallway is an auditorium and above that is a large gallery for travelling road show exhibitions.
To the right as one enters from the outside there is a pair of escalators up and down to the floor above. Passing straight ahead as one enters from the outside one confronts the eight glass doors into the Herb Ritts Gallery, or the old museum proper.
When this foyer had been an entrance there were ticket sellers and takers, information booths, and a crush of babbling humanity desperate to experience The Arts. There was the tintinnabulation of silver plated service clashing with the good china in the upscale restaurant. There were hordes of school children to and fro-ing from the cafeteria. Now that it is no longer an entrance EXCEPT FOR GROUPS, there is no presence of museum staff at all. One still hears the dining room ruckus, one still hears the hordes of hungry children, and the babbling of the lost and aimless, but the first staff member one encounters is the attendant in the Herb Ritts Gallery.
The Gallery, the museum’s designated photography exhibition space, is surprisingly small. It is about twenty by thirty feet. In the west wall there are those eight doors opening into the former new entrance, on the north there is a large freight elevator with heavy metal doors as well as a set of double metal doors ceiling high which is used by staff members, on the east a double doorway leads into the long corridor back to the rotunda, and on the south there is a pair of double glass doors leading into the Asian Arts Galleries. Of the approximately one hundred linear feet of wall space, at least a third of it is taken up by doorways …all of which are in CONSTANT use.
When I visit a museum to see a specific exhibition I usually first spend about an hour, at least, looking at the art works. I gave this exhibit the hour and then later in the day I returned and gave it a second look. I returned the next day and visited this gallery two more times. In two days I spent more than three hours looking at the Harry Callahan photographs. During each of my visits there was always foot traffic through this gallery, there was always the noise from excited groups coming into the museum unaware that they were actually in the museum galleries, there was always someone asking the attendant for directions to other areas of the museum.
As per the signage the west entrance is now indeed used for groups. On the first day of my visit four different groups of preschool children were shepherded through the gallery, many of whom pointed out to mommy the white haired old man. (Who in their right mind thinks a fine art museum is an appropriate venue for preschool children!) On both days there were several groups of middle school children and one group of high school children. The one observation that can be made about Boston children is that they are never, at any age, told to be quiet in public spaces …by anyone …parents, teachers, chaperons, or museum staff..
As for the gallery itself, the worst aspect of it is the lighting. There are permanent tracks in the ceiling for clip lights and the photographs in this exhibition are illuminated with standard canister lamps. The wattage seems rather low. Otherwise the room has only an ambient glow. As a result the photographs on the north wall reflect those on the south, and vice versa, the photos on the east wall reflect the large white stone space outside the gallery and the photographs on the free standing wall on the west reflect the lights and art works in the galleries leading back to the rotunda. The works in shiny silver frames kick reflected light into the viewer’s eyes. Not one of these art works is well lighted. I consider that a disgrace. But it is lighting similar to what I saw in the Yousef Karsh exhibition two years ago, which was bad and so I can conclude that as far as lighting fine art photographs is concerned, this museum is indifferent.
Imagine trying to see art works in that little tiny overcrowded dim room. Imagine trying to study and concentrate in the midst of all that hubbub. This museum needs to understand that anything put on view in that room will only be seen as trivial by anyone passing though there. It is a profoundly disrespectful venue for the work of someone like Harry Callahan. But perhaps this museum is still of the opinion that photography is not really one of the fine arts. Perhaps, indeed, as it appears, they really just don’t care…these photographs, any photographs, are merely filler for this problematic, migratory space.
The Museum of Fine Arts is at the side of the Fens and as that park is an oval I am even more directionally challenged than elsewhere in the city. Thus in discussing the Museum I need to establish an arbitrary point of orientation. I will say that the side of the museum facing Huntington Avenue, the original front and entrance, is south, the side facing the Fens is north, the new American Wing is to the east, and the parking lot and the older new wing are to the west. When entering from the old main entrance, from the south, one can pass around the Grand Stairway into a circular room that opens over head to the central rotunda. A corridor continues through to the north entrance and another makes a straight line through several galleries to the west side of the building. The Herb Ritts gallery is the last room at the end of that corridor in what was once the far west side of the original building. While I was in that gallery two women passed through and one said to the other: “I remember when this area was the cafeteria.”
When I first visited the museum in September 2006, the entrances were on the Huntington Avenue, south, side and on the West. Two years ago an entrance had been opened on the renovated north side, the south entrance was closed, and the west was still in use. Now the south entrance has been reconfigured and reopened, the north entrance is open and the west entrance is closed ….EXCEPT FOR GROUPS. Please keep that emphasis in mind!
The addition at the west side of the building opens from the street into a very large public space the full height of the building. It is clad in white marble or some such stone. To the left as one enters there is a coat room and rest rooms, there is a long hallway which passes beside the very upscale restaurant for the ladies who lunch, and parallel to that is a very large book store. At the far end of that hallway is a stairway leading down to the lower scale cafeteria on the ground floor. On the other side of this long hallway is an auditorium and above that is a large gallery for travelling road show exhibitions.
To the right as one enters from the outside there is a pair of escalators up and down to the floor above. Passing straight ahead as one enters from the outside one confronts the eight glass doors into the Herb Ritts Gallery, or the old museum proper.
When this foyer had been an entrance there were ticket sellers and takers, information booths, and a crush of babbling humanity desperate to experience The Arts. There was the tintinnabulation of silver plated service clashing with the good china in the upscale restaurant. There were hordes of school children to and fro-ing from the cafeteria. Now that it is no longer an entrance EXCEPT FOR GROUPS, there is no presence of museum staff at all. One still hears the dining room ruckus, one still hears the hordes of hungry children, and the babbling of the lost and aimless, but the first staff member one encounters is the attendant in the Herb Ritts Gallery.
The Gallery, the museum’s designated photography exhibition space, is surprisingly small. It is about twenty by thirty feet. In the west wall there are those eight doors opening into the former new entrance, on the north there is a large freight elevator with heavy metal doors as well as a set of double metal doors ceiling high which is used by staff members, on the east a double doorway leads into the long corridor back to the rotunda, and on the south there is a pair of double glass doors leading into the Asian Arts Galleries. Of the approximately one hundred linear feet of wall space, at least a third of it is taken up by doorways …all of which are in CONSTANT use.
When I visit a museum to see a specific exhibition I usually first spend about an hour, at least, looking at the art works. I gave this exhibit the hour and then later in the day I returned and gave it a second look. I returned the next day and visited this gallery two more times. In two days I spent more than three hours looking at the Harry Callahan photographs. During each of my visits there was always foot traffic through this gallery, there was always the noise from excited groups coming into the museum unaware that they were actually in the museum galleries, there was always someone asking the attendant for directions to other areas of the museum.
As per the signage the west entrance is now indeed used for groups. On the first day of my visit four different groups of preschool children were shepherded through the gallery, many of whom pointed out to mommy the white haired old man. (Who in their right mind thinks a fine art museum is an appropriate venue for preschool children!) On both days there were several groups of middle school children and one group of high school children. The one observation that can be made about Boston children is that they are never, at any age, told to be quiet in public spaces …by anyone …parents, teachers, chaperons, or museum staff..
As for the gallery itself, the worst aspect of it is the lighting. There are permanent tracks in the ceiling for clip lights and the photographs in this exhibition are illuminated with standard canister lamps. The wattage seems rather low. Otherwise the room has only an ambient glow. As a result the photographs on the north wall reflect those on the south, and vice versa, the photos on the east wall reflect the large white stone space outside the gallery and the photographs on the free standing wall on the west reflect the lights and art works in the galleries leading back to the rotunda. The works in shiny silver frames kick reflected light into the viewer’s eyes. Not one of these art works is well lighted. I consider that a disgrace. But it is lighting similar to what I saw in the Yousef Karsh exhibition two years ago, which was bad and so I can conclude that as far as lighting fine art photographs is concerned, this museum is indifferent.
Imagine trying to see art works in that little tiny overcrowded dim room. Imagine trying to study and concentrate in the midst of all that hubbub. This museum needs to understand that anything put on view in that room will only be seen as trivial by anyone passing though there. It is a profoundly disrespectful venue for the work of someone like Harry Callahan. But perhaps this museum is still of the opinion that photography is not really one of the fine arts. Perhaps, indeed, as it appears, they really just don’t care…these photographs, any photographs, are merely filler for this problematic, migratory space.
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