Category Archives: MoMA

Against Taking Photos in Museums

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People should not take photographs in museums. This is me doing a 180 degree revision of my opinion. I mean, I myself take them and show them to you here. I think to limit cultural distribution is silly and that to take a flashless pictures of something in a museum can do nil amount of harm. I now know differently.

I now know that it is a scandalous practice detrimental to museums. On visits to the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday, I wasn’t overwhelmed by the crowds so much as blown away by the number of people who only looked at the art through a camera lens. Pause, click, pause, click they walked through the museum documenting their trip meanwhile getting in my way, accidentally taking a photograph with flash, and generally showing little interest in the the art. They were more oblivious to the people around them as they tried to get a good shot.

Really, should photographs be allowed in museums at all? Do you take photographs? Does photography interfere with your enjoyment of art?

Ravels in Review Friday

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It’s been a long time since I did a Ravels in Review post between my trip to Costa Rica and skipping last week because there was very little that needed to be summed up. It’s so nice to be swinging these art ravels in full force, you won’t even here me rail on the weather. Especially as it is supposed to be a fantastic 71 degrees in NYC today.

But as to these past ravels, you’ll see we have some interesting debates raised as to beauty, what it is and whether society values it, tales of rapscallions both old and new, a review of MoMA’s photography exhibition Into the Sunset, and we even poked our nose across the pond to check out happenings at the Louvre and the situation for art recovery in L’Aquila.
Whew–time to take a breath. I also am excited by the idea of a public cafe cum art studio. So read, enjoy, comment: I always like to hear from people.

If you’re wondering why I’ve said so little about Costa Rica, it’s not that it was a cultural black hole per se. Watching a soccer match between Costa Rica and Mexico proved to be quite the cultural experience, and Costa Rica possesses great natural beauty. Not to mention surfing, zip lining, sloths (like the cute one above), toucans and tons of monkeys. It makes for a wonderful vacation, just not so artsy.



I surfed! (the smallest waves). Anyhow, happy Friday to you all! Enjoy the warm weekend!

Cowboys, Migrants, and Signs at MoMA’s Into the Sunset exhibition

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Chevron, Stephen Shore

Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West, on at MoMA through June 8, has been called an ‘unprecedented look at more than a century of changing myths and cultural attitudes about the American West, with over 120 photographs, from 1850 to the present, by photographers including Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, Cindy Sherman, and Stephen Shore.’ At least, this is how MoMA describes it. The statement is more or less true, but it disguises the insidious fact that the exhibition is (as you might have wondered from the photographers listed) rather an odd agglomeration of images.

Untitled Film Still #43, Cindy Sherman

The curators wished to use the simultaneous exploration of the West and the development of photography to make a point. I find that it offers little illumination other than photographs have been taken of the West. The exhibition is organized thematically. After attending a lecture at MoMA yesterday, I can now inform you that that the exhibition is meant to take you through different facets of the mythic West such as landscape (unspoiled potential), people (seeking destiny, identified by trade such as cowboy or Indian, individuals), transportation (railroad, Manifest Destiny, highways signage). If anything, the exhibition suggests the plethora of ‘West’s we Americans cherish: rugged plains being settled and immigrants, cowboys and Indians, Yosemite natural park and Hollywood. There was an undertone of falsity and disillusionment with these ideals, especially in the latter part of the exhibition.

The exhibition might not suggest a unified concept of photography in the West and it might not impress upon you the development of photography itself, but it does prove to be an evocative experience. From Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in Dorthea Lange’s photos to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Again in the highway and signage images of the 1950s and 60s, I was reminded of the lone individual going mobile to follow his manifest destiny under the enormous setting sun. However, like that last sentence, the exhibition never gelled into more than a pastiche of cliches.