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.