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Archive for the ‘Art Museum’ Category

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On Site: Photographic Treasures from the Collection of Alfred Stieglitz, The Met, NYC

In Art Museum, Black and White Photography, Exhibits on October 28, 2011 at 2:46 pm

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Clarence H. White , “Nude”

Along with an exhibition of paintings from the Stieglitz personal collection, The Met currently has a wonderful turn of the century survey of photography, also from his personal collection. The exhibit  presents some forty-eight photographic treasures by Anne Brigman, Alvin Langdon Coburn, F. Holland Day, Gertrude Käsebier, Joseph Keiley, Heinrich Kühn, Edward Steichen, Clarence White, and others.

A towering figure in early twentieth-century photography, Alfred Stieglitz was not only a master of the medium, but also a powerful tastemaker and tireless advocate for photography as a fine art in the early 1900s. Through his sumptuous and influential journal Camera Work (1902-1917) and his "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession" (1905-1917), known to insiders simply as "291" for its address on Fifth Avenue, Stieglitz introduced the public to the best of artistic photography and, eventually, modern art. He was also his gallery’s best client, supporting the artists he most admired by purchasing their work. Stieglitz’s photography collection, donated to the Metropolitan by gift in 1933 and bequest following his death in 1946, constitutes the finest gathering of Photo-Secession works anywhere.

October 11, 2011-February 26, 2012

For more information: The Met

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Preview: Patti Smith – Camera Solo, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

In Art Museum, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Photographer on October 14, 2011 at 12:16 pm

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Patti Smith

Years ago we bumped into Patti in Bloomingdales. With a shy smile that would become her hallmark for 4 decades, she quietly said “Hi!” and went about her business. And for those ensuing decades she has continued to impress us. Her Mapplethorpe connection is well known, but her own photography has only recently been highlighted in Europe. Now with a significant exhibit at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, viewers can sample another side of this unique American talent.

The pioneering artist, musician, and poet, Patti Smith has made her mark on the American cultural landscape throughout her 40-year career, from her earliest explorations of artistic expression with friend and vanguard photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the 1960s and 70s to her profound influence on the nascent punk rock scene in the late 1970s and 80s. Patti Smith: Camera Solo will be the first exhibition of her photography in the United States. The exhibition will include seventy photographs, one multi-media installation and one video work.

October 21, 2011 – February 19, 2012

For more information: Patti Smith

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On Site: “Spaces” Hofer/Struth, Clark Institute, Williamstown, Mass.

In Art Museum, Black and White Photography, Photographer on August 22, 2011 at 12:15 pm

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Thomas Struth, “Audience 7”, Florence

When it comes to fine art photography, these days “bigger is better” … or so they say. The fact that color lends a different dimension to these larger works is an interesting thought in itself. Could Black and White compete at this scale? At the beautiful Clark Museum you can judge for yourself with the wall size photos of Candida Hofer and Thomas Struth.

The large-scale photographs by Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth featured in this exhibition offer distinct but connected perspectives on the ways individuals interact with the spaces they inhabit. Trained together at the Kunstakademie (Arts Academy) Düsseldorf in Germany in the 1970s, Höfer and Struth have embraced photography as a medium of social, cultural, and historical purpose, choosing public spaces as their subjects.
Both Höfer and Struth engage with history and the passage of time. Höfer’s photographs of libraries, auditoriums, and research centers are mostly uninhabited by people but filled with light and the mystery of visual and intellectual contemplation. Although the architecture of these monumental rooms conforms to a symmetrical logic, the photographs are pervaded by a sense of loss as the use and significance of the spaces have shifted over time. Struth’s works capture church and museum visitors engaged in the act of looking, as we, the viewers of the photographs, observe them from a physical and temporal distance. This reflexive impulse allows us to experience several historical moments at once, both inside and outside of the picture’s frame.

Now through September 5.

For more information: Clark

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Notable: The Photography of Marvin Zindler, Museum of Printing History, Houston, Tx.

In Art Museum, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Photographer on August 1, 2011 at 8:57 pm

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Go back to the fifties and  meet the Texas version of Wee Gee … Marvin Zindler. Street violence and characters from Houston’s past are captured with a certain flare, lost today.

For decades, Marvin Zindler was known in Houston and throughout the world as KTRK-TV’s flamboyant consumer affairs reporter and advocate for the indigent. However, what many do not know is that during the early 1950s, Zindler prowled Houston’s streets as a newspaper photographer covering the crime beat. Working for the now-defunct daily Houston Press, Zindler caught Houstonians at their most vulnerable. Crime suspects, robbery victims, socialites, wayward juveniles and even domestic violence victims were captured in unflinching detail.

Now through August 13, 2011

For more information: Museum of Printing History

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Preview: Night Vision – Photography After Dark,The Met, NYC

In Art Museum, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Photographer on July 15, 2011 at 12:10 pm

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Robert Frank, ”London”

Black and White is a medium that absolutely suits low light imagery. A show with “after dark” as the theme is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

This installation surveys the ways in which modern photographers have used the camera to explore the visual and symbolic potential of the nocturnal image. Among the featured works are moody Pictorialist nocturnes by Edward Steichen and Alvin Langdon Coburn; shadowy street scenes by Brassaï, Bill Brandt, and Robert Frank; electric light abstractions by Italian Futurist Giuseppe Albergamo; and aerial views of suburban Los Angeles at night by contemporary artist David Deutsch. Drawn entirely from the Metropolitan’s collection, the installation includes approximately forty photographs, ranging from the late 1890s to the present.

Now through September 18, 2011

For more on the exhibit: Met

For another recent exhibit that explores the evening hours: Night

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Preview: Elliott Erwitt – Personal Best, International Center for Photography

In Art Museum, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Photographer on June 3, 2011 at 11:22 am

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Elliott Erwitt

We were fortunate to meet the “grand old man” at ICP 3 years ago for a book signing. Sitting there in suspenders he looked more like an accountant than a world famous photographer. But looking more closely you caught the ever present gleam in his eye that belies the humor of his excellent images.

Distinguished as both a documentary and commercial photographer, Erwitt has made some of the most memorable photographs of the twentieth century, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Che Guevara, as well as astonishing scenes of everyday life, filled with poetry, wit, and special sense of humor. An active photographer since 1948, Erwitt sought out Edward Steichen, Robert Capa, and Roy Stryker in New York in the early 1950s, and they became his mentors. With Capa’s encouragement, Erwitt joined Magnum Photos in 1953. Erwitt is both an eyewitness to history and a dreamer with a camera, whose images have been widely published in the international press and in more than twenty books.

Now through August 28.

For more information: ICP

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Preview: London Street Photography, Museum of London, UK

In Art Museum, Article, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Photographer on March 13, 2011 at 4:21 pm

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Liebling’s ‘Outside Claridge’s Hotel, Mayfair’

In an article today, in the Financial Times, Claire Holland gives not only a nice review of a new “street photography” exhibit in London but also gives some nice historical context to the genre:

As if to assert street photography’s worth, a flurry of exhibitions exploring the genre is opening in the UK this year: Daniel Meadows will present Fieldwork: Photographs of Britain 1971-1988 at the National Media Museum in Bradford in September; at London Whitechapel Gallery, This is Whitechapel opens today and includes works by Ian Berry, followed by an exhibition of work by Paul Graham next month; and street photography is currently the theme at Format Photography Festival in Derby.

“It is very human to watch one another, and to photograph one another,” says Polly Braden, whose work is featured in London Street Photography at the Museum of London. Part of Braden’s ongoing project, London Square Mile, playful vignettes of life in the City of London, hang in the contemporary section of this generous show, which has been drawn from the museum’s archives.

For more on this subject: Financial Times

Related Articles

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Notable: Top Ten New York Photography Shows in 2010, Vince Aletti

In Art Museum, Article, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Gallery on January 24, 2011 at 5:46 am

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Constantin Brancusi, “L’Oiseau” (“Golden Bird”)

One of the great “eyes” out there viewing fine art photography is Vince Aletti:

Vince Aletti reviews photography exhibitions for Goings On About Town. In addition to his work for The New Yorker, he reviews photography books for Photograph. His work has also appeared in Aperture, Art + Auction, and photoworks. Aletti was the art editor of the Village Voice from 1994 to 2005 and the paper’s photo critic for twenty years. In 2005, he won the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for writing. He is currently an adjunct curator at I.C.P., where he is working on a series of exhibitions about fashion photography.

Check out his top ten list at : New Yorker Magazine

Related Articles

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Favorites: “Best of the Best” Photography Exhibits 2010

In Art Museum, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Gallery on January 2, 2011 at 12:19 pm

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Alexey Titarenko – "Untitled (Crowd 1)"

For 2010 we visited hundreds of exhibits and events as a team and have selected the “Best of the Best” based purely on subjective criteria. The exhibit could be important historically, be exceptional from a curatorial standpoint or just have left lasting impact.

Check out the gallery or Museum indicated and see their archived exhibits for a virtual visit to some of these exhibits.

In no particular order:

  • Houston FotoFest
  • “Ruptures and Continuities”, Museum of Fine Arts Houston
  • William Wylie “Still Water”, Jenkins Johnson Gallery
  • JoAnn Verburg “Interruptions”, Pace/MacGill
  • Alexey Titarenko, Nailya Alexander Gallery
  • AIPAD Annual Show
  • "No Singing Allowed: Flamenco and Photography" Aperture Gallery
  • “Artists See Artists II” – Deborah Bell Photographs
  • Michael Kenna "Venezia"- Robert Mann Gallery
  • Edward Weston, Michener Art Museum
  • Ray K. Metzker ‘s “AutoMagic”, Laurence Miller Gallery
  • Frederick Sommer, Philadelphia Museum of Art
  • Collection of Anne and Arthur Goldstein, Allentown Art Museum
  • “Printing With Light”, Museum of Printing History
  • IN THE ZONE, A Century Of Black & White Photos, Henry Gregg Gallery
  • The Mexican Suitcase, ICP
  • The Summer Photo Show, Scott Nichols Gallery
  • Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties, The Getty Museum
  • Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players, The Met
  • Found: Discoveries of FotoFest and PhotoNOLA, John Cleary Gallery
  • Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, MOMA
  • Behind The Curtain – Tichy and Sudek, Howard Greenberg
  • ”In Review”, Gallery 339
  • Joseph Szabo, “Jones Beach”, Gitterman Gallery
  • Lucien Clergue, Throckmorton Fine Art, NYC
  • "Painted Cubes" Ion Zupcu, ClampArt
  • Robert Adams – Summer Nights, Walking –Matthew Marks Gallery

And the best for last …

Henri Cartier-Bresson – The Modern Century, MOMA

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Henri Cartier-Bresson. Juvisy, France

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Preview: Three Masters of Photography at the Met “Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand”, New York

In Art Museum, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Photographer on December 19, 2010 at 11:13 am

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Edward Steichen by Paul Strand

“Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand” is our destination this week in NYC. An early Christmas present indeed. For a preview guide please read the article by Ariella Budick in today’s Financial Times then take the time to look at the the online catalog of the Met exhibit.

According to the standard narrative, Alfred Stieglitz came to the medium in the late 19th century, determined to pry it from the clutches of Sunday amateurs and enthrone it next to painting and sculpture as one of the fine arts. He and his fellow pictorialists imitated the gauzy, atmospheric paintings of Whistler, the compositions of Japanese woodblock prints and the steamy cityscapes of the impressionists. But by the time of the legendary Armory Show in New York in 1913, Stieglitz had rejected the symbolist style in favour of a modernist orthodoxy,
insisting on sharp focus with no visible retouching, and commanding a kind of latent abstraction from his followers. With the fanaticism of a new convert, he condemned the manipulated print for its fraudulence and artificiality.
Formalism now ruled, and Stieglitz even reinterpreted his old pictures to conform to his new ideas. “You may call this a crowd of immigrants,” he famously said of “The Steerage”, taken in 1907 but not exhibited until 1913. “To me it is a study in mathematical lines, in balance, in a pattern of light and shade.”

The exhibit runs now through April 10, 2011.

The FT article: Financial Times

The Met Catalog:  Met Online

The Met exhibit information: Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand

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