Tag Archives: photography

A Weekend of Museums – Brooklyn Museum, MOMA & the MET

Posted on by
G. Caillebotte's "Oarsmen Rowing on the Yerres" - Brooklyn Museum

G. Caillebotte's "Oarsmen Rowing on the Yerres" - Brooklyn Museum

Last weekend we spent one very busy Saturday in New York City museuming. We started in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum. This time we took the 2 train from 125th St in Harlem. After 45 minutes and a bit of subway back and forth caused by track work, we emerged from the subway walking up to look straight at the new glass entrance hall of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Brooklyn Museum

Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings From Paris to the Sea

We visited a number of galleries. I found the exhibition, “Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings From Paris to the Sea” very interesting. Unlike the New York Time’s reviewer Holland Cotter,1 I am not too bothered with issues of exactly where any particular artist fits into the taxonomy that art critics and historians use.

G. Caillebotte-"Factories in Argenteuil"

G. Caillebotte-"Factories in Argenteuil"

Unlike most taxonomies of the physical world, art taxonomy seems to obscure more than enlighten. At any rate I really enjoyed the industrial and street scenes. His perspectives are frequently novel.((pictures of Caillebotte’s work shown here borrowed without permission from the Brooklyn Museum website))


Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party”

Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” is now on permanent display. I must admit that very few of the 1038 women honored in this piece were familiar to me. The “Heritage Panels” that are part of this work offer a timeline and some hints about why the women included at the dinner are there. The Brooklyn Museum has wonderful web pages on the Dinner Party, including a 3600 virtual tour here. Continue reading →

  1. see his review March 27, 2009 “The Reluctant Impressionist here [↩]
Share|

Stephen DiRado’s “Dinner Series: how we lived”

Posted on by

Today we visited the Fitchburg Art Museum in Fitchburg, MA. The exhibition of 18 large C prints by DiRado was a delight and should be on your list of art stops. The topic is dinner with family and friends. Though working with a huge camera, DiRado, a Worcester,MA, photographer, has the participation of a regular cast of characters in these posed pictures. The setups and striking lighting are quite commanding. He exploits depth of field wittily at times.

Go see them.

Don’t miss the Italian themed exhibition with lots of good phots, many by Italian photographers unknown to me. I particularl liked the many works by Mario Giacomelli (1925 – 2000).

Share|

Milt Rogovin – The Forgotten Ones

Written 10/12/2003

During one of our whirlwind weekends in New York, Karen and I went to the New York Historical Society (2 West 77th Street New York, NY 10024 http://www.nyhistory.org) to catch the last day of the exhibit, REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN ONES: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF MILTON ROGOVIN.

This proved to be the best photography, most engaging exhibit I have seen in years.

“A joint project of the N-YHS, Sound Portraits Production (the Society’s collaborators on the 2001 exhibition Flophouse ), and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo, this remarkable exhibition combines prime examples of 93-year-old Rogovin’s photographs of Buffalo over five decades (including recent work), with audio installations and artifacts. The exhibition is accompanied by a short film, The Forgotten Ones , directed by Harvey Wang (which won the Best Documentary Short award at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival), and a new book, Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones (with Dave Isay, David Miller and Harvey Wang; published by Quantuck Lane Press in June, 2003).”

(from the New York Historical Society web site)

rogovin_140

Anne and Milton Rogovin (June 2003)

At the heart of the experience was a roomful of triptychs, photos taken of the same family, if not always the same family members spanning three decades. Rogovin combined brief texts by one or more of those pictured and some included audio versions with the authors of the text speaking.

Here are a few images:

11242001

Eva and Daughter 1972, 1985, and 1992 (image borrowed without permission from The Getty Museum (http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o112420.html)

 

11242101

Grandparents and Baptism Boy 1974, 1985, 1992 (image borrowed without permission from The Getty Museum http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/oz112421.html)

 

And an updated “quartet” extending the one above:

RogovinMarchese73-85-92-01

Here are a couple of other pictures gleaned from various web sites:

rogo-man

 

rogo-father

(from the Working People series)

 

There is a Milton Rogovin website.


Share|

2008-9-11 Karen Davis – McCann Family at Griffin Photography Museum, Winchester MA

Reply

Karen had an opening today for her new series The McCann Family. Here is the announcement appropriated from the museum’s website:

GRIFFIN GALLERY THE MCCANN FAMILY – PHOTOGRAPHS BY KAREN DAVIS Sept. 11 – Nov. 2, 2008 Karen Davis photograph Mother Dreams – Image © Karen Davis  When Karen Davis was small, her younger sister, Cheryl, had a set of four mechanical dolls she called the McCann Family. After Cheryl died a few years ago, Davis inherited the dolls and made them the subject of a series of photographs.

The McCann Family is featured in the Griffin Gallery of the Griffin Museum September 11 through November 2.

The photographs are part of a visual memoir by Davis that is a work in progress. The mechanical dolls, she says, were “a thinly disguised version of the Davis family. There was a boy doll, girl doll, man and woman doll.” The Davis family had a mother and father and two girls, so Cheryl decided she was the boy doll, Tom McCann. Karen Davis was the girl doll, Mary Ann McCann.

When Cheryl, who was born with spina bifida, died, the McCann Family and all their possessions went to Davis. “It has taken most of my lifetime to appreciate the courage and imagination of my sister,” Davis says. “Placing the McCanns on stage – directing their actions, brings me back to our childhood and to memories of an extraordinary woman.”

“The McCann Family is a poignant visual tribute to the Davis family,” says Paula Tognarelli executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “Karen Davis spins her familial tale through the poetic capacity of her photographs. Her images move and charm the viewer all at the same time.”

Davis, of Cambridge, MA, is a photographer, book artist, and educator. Her work is featured at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA);] Houghton Rare Books Library, Harvard University; Boston Drawing Project at Bernard Toale Gallery; and in corporate and private collections.

Tommy's World - photograph by Karen Davis (c) Karen Davis 2008

Her work can be seen on her website, www.YesThatKarenDavis.com.

Davis teaches photo-based and word-image courses for Lesley Seminars at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. She is also a principal in artistmarketing.biz, which specializes in websites and other marketing services for artists.

An opening reception with the artist is Sept. 11, 7-8:30 p.m. It is open to all. The reception is preceded by a members-only talk with Davis at 6:15 p.m. Please RSVP by September 4.

Share|