Today seems like a day of the three. We spent the day going to three museums and just came back and will soon go to see a triple feature.
Three Photography exhibitions. The Moving Pictures at the Guggenheim felt a bit like a super-sized hall of mirrors on yeast. (The conditions in the large interior just do not seem to be ideal for large photographs behind reflective glass. Some of the pieces were only somehow visible from very strange angles.) The New York, New York Show at the Metropolitan felt like a very perfect little intimate lunch with old, knowledgeable friends. (There are actually two shows there and they seem connected like siamese twins. The selection is quite superb though. Absolutely worth a visit.) The American Perspective show at the Whitney felt a bit less overwhelming at a second visit, but the feeling of a well curated Salon show came up. Or, to stay with the food analogies, a very eclectic buffet, with great American specialties. The Whitney show will get another visit as a Catalogue and with friends who will soon come here from Germany. The Guggenheim will get another visit with the same friends. And I have the feeling that I will go to visit the Met show during the week. And maybe on various days. It is a nicely dense little gem. (I guess Gems get better the denser they are sometimes). Opinion, opinion, opinion. See the shows and places for yourself and tell me more.
This spring I began visiting a lot of galleries in town and many of those shows featured large scale images. Richard Misrach, Axel Hutte, Tina Barney, for example. When I saw New York, New York at the Met, it was difficult to adjust to the small scale images. Not too many extreme enlargements. One or two, maybe. One interesting incident was when I was looking at a Lewis Hine shot of a little boy carrying a tremendous pile of hat boxes. Hine was documenting the horrible conditions of child labor in the US. A lady walked up next to me and began laughing. The picture, out of context, it quite amusing, but I wonder what Hine would have thought.
Moving Pictures was interesting for its variety. I had gone after reading your "preview", specifically for the German photography, but saw many new photographers who I had not encountered before (my range of familiarity is limited as yet.) Some of the more "out there" stuff I skipped, but very enlightening.