Landscape photography: dead and forgotten at art museums?

I just got back from a cross-country trip, coast of California to NYC and back by FJ. Forty-two days on the road and I hit a lot of art museums (Denver Art Museum, Museum of Nebraska Art, Nelsen-Atkins, St. Louis Art Museum, Detroit Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Akron Art Museum, and the Chicago Institute of Art). At each Museum I saw every exhibit, usually there from opening to close. (Not counting the Met. I was there all day and barely scratched the surface.)

Two observations that might be of interest (and surprising) to people here:

1) Very little photography on display in permanent collection galleries. Lots of photography on display in temporary exhibit galleries.

2) Essentially no "straight photography" or f/64-style landscape work on display. A few prints scattered here and there. A tiny Brett Weston show in a stairway landing. Not a single Ansel Adams print on display anywhere.

--Darin

An impressive list of galleries-

I only visited three in the past month, commando style, in and out quickly-

The Fatali Gallery in Zion- now according to the attendant, and the accompanying publicity, most of the prints on offer are Cibachromes, from originals shot on 8x10. Very, very sharp large prints- must have been a lot of very expertly executed unsharp masks there, I'm guessing. I'm not sure if they would be acceptable as f64 group style, since it's as much an historical grouping as an adherence to a manifesto...

I also visited the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, primarily for the Turrell Skyspace, but there were a couple of rooms of Bill Own prints to see there too. Not landscape, historical urban culture.

The Getty Centre in LA is showing one of Ansel Adams Museum Sets; I think it's still current. It's really well worth seeing, particularly if, like me, exposure to rooms full of Ansel prints has previously been limited. Very highly recommended, if you're in LA.

Regarding the overall trend you noticed, I couldn't possibly comment- but perhaps photographic representations of the landscape as an idyllic new frontier is now, for the most part, part of photography's history...

Depressing

The Art Institute of Chicago has a permanent gallery, but I think everyone misses it because it's a hallway.

I have a hard time thinking of landscape photography as art. More, I associate it with calendars and post cards, and decorative things in general, in the general category of decorative arts/crafts, which is usually not the fare of art musuems except in small specialized doses. In fact, it seems relatively clear that museums don't think much of landscape painting, either, not just the photographic landscape--there's usually not much of it in them, by proportion.

Interesting support in the last paragraph here: http://arthistory.about.com/od/gloss...e-painting.htm

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Originally Posted by mdarnton

The Art Institute of Chicago has a permanent gallery, but I think everyone misses it because it's a hallway.

I have a hard time thinking of landscape photography as art. More, I associate it with calendars and post cards, and decorative things in general, in the general category of decorative arts/crafts, which is usually not the fare of art musuems except in small specialized doses. In fact, it seems relatively clear that museums don't think much of landscape painting, either, not just the photographic landscape--there's usually not much of it in them, by proportion.

Interesting support in the last paragraph here: http://arthistory.about.com/od/gloss...e-painting.htm

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there is a photography gallery that just opened in my home town, mostly local things, not sure how well it will do yet, most everything in there is from a digital camera. what type of photography do you consider art? just curious I really enjoy viewing pictorialism, just something about it.

What I like and why museums collect and exhibit are such different issues! In the context of this thread, I think it's more about museums than me. It would appear that museums are more about historical milestones and the innovators of styles, than followers and also-rans. So, Carleton Watkins and William Henry Jackson, and Eliot Porter, all vs Ansel Adams--what do you think? It will be interesting to see what they do in the very long run with Gursky and Crewdson, who in context might be more considered followers and imitators, or maybe not, ignoring their current marketing appeal. When I first saw William Eggleston's work, in the context of the photography of that time, it was about nothing. Is Gursky's "nothing" far enough removed from Eggleston's more innovative (at the time) nothing to not be considered derivative from the standpoint of a museum? And how does he fit in with all of the others who've been photographing nothing for a long time now, but doing it smaller and cheaper? I don't know. Another interesting comparison is Winogrand whose work I personally abhor, vs all of the subsequent inept grab and run copyists calling themselves street photographers. There's an historical reason for Winogrand being in museums, but not the others, in my small opinion.

My own history is in photojournalism, which no one pretends is an art, usually. I feel the same about modern landscape photography, it being so incredibly derivative. However, I never pinned my ego on being defined as an artist, as so many second rate copyists seem to be. The other day I clicked on a modern landscapist's work. To read the words on his site, he is the best thing since sliced bread in every possible way and many ways he hadn't thought to express yet, but when he does, he will tell you about them. However, in comparison with St Ansel, whose work I'm not fond of, myself, expecially in the context of Watkins, he trailed far behind. Yet I'm sure he considers himself an artist. I guess what museums do is filter out ego and try to show us the substance of it all.

I am pretty sure, however, than anyone who's devoted his life (knowingly or not) to recreating the stuff shown in the 1950s in Grossbild Technik magazine is standing on thin ice calling himself an artist now. :-) That certainly disqualifies a lot of modern landscape work.

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Originally Posted by mdarnton

What I like and why museums collect and exhibit are such different issues! In the context of this thread, I think it's more about museums than me. It would appear that museums are more about historical milestones and the innovators of styles, than followers and also-rans. So, Carleton Watkins and William Henry Jackson, and Eliot Porter, all vs Ansel Adams--what do you think? It will be interesting to see what they do in the very long run with Gursky and Crewdson, who in context might be more considered followers and imitators, or maybe not, ignoring their current marketing appeal. When I first saw William Eggleston's work, in the context of the photography of that time, it was about nothing. Is Gursky's "nothing" far enough removed from Eggleston's more innovative (at the time) nothing to not be considered derivative from the standpoint of a museum? And how does he fit in with all of the others who've been photographing nothing for a long time now, but doing it smaller and cheaper? I don't know. Another interesting comparison is Winogrand whose work I personally abhor, vs all of the subsequent inept grab and run copyists calling themselves street photographers. There's an historical reason for Winogrand being in museums, but not the others, in my small opinion.

My own history is in photojournalism, which no one pretends is an art, usually. I feel the same about modern landscape photography, it being so incredibly derivative. However, I never pinned my ego on being defined as an artist, as so many second rate copyists seem to be. The other day I clicked on a modern landscapist's work. To read the words on his site, he is the best thing since sliced bread in every possible way and many ways he hadn't thought to express yet, but when he does, he will tell you about them. However, in comparison with St Ansel, whose work I'm not fond of, myself, expecially in the context of Watkins, he trailed far behind. Yet I'm sure he considers himself an artist. I guess what museums do is filter out ego and try to show us the substance of it all.

I am pretty sure, however, than anyone who's devoted his life (knowingly or not) to recreating the stuff shown in the 1950s in Grossbild Technik magazine is standing on thin ice calling himself an artist now. :-) That certainly disqualifies a lot of modern landscape work.

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By that logic, contemporary realist painters are not artists, nor sculptors who carve human figures in marble. Plein Air painters, for the same reason, would be (as you put it) "copyists."
Nothing new to see here. Move along!:rolleyes:

I'd like to invert the thread : Forgotten Art Museums that no longer show anything we're interested in.

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Originally Posted by Darin Boville

1) Very little photography on display in permanent collection galleries. Lots of photography on display in temporary exhibit galleries.

2) Essentially no "straight photography" or f/64-style landscape work on display. ...

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Maybe you just went to the wrong museums and galleries. Locally, the Amon Carter Museum (Fort Worth) has a Stieglitz show up. The Arlington Museum of Art had the entire museum full of Ansel Adams all summer. The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston has an exhibit of early French work. Dallas has two fine galleries devoted exclusively to photography.

There's always the CCP in Tucson and the Getty Center in LA. Pier 24 in San Francisco. Etc.

No, it's not all Group f.64 stuff (that's really pretty narrow), but there's plenty of photography out there to see if one knows where to look. :cool:

EDIT: Oh, and there's this:

http://www.mopa.org/after-ansel-adams

http://pickedrawpeeled.blogspot.com/...spired-by.html

In the perspective of the function of a museum as a cultural archive, maybe that is basically the situation to some extent?

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Originally Posted by John Kasaian

By that logic, contemporary realist painters are not artists, nor sculptors who carve human figures in marble. Plein Air painters, for the same reason, would be (as you put it) "copyists."
Nothing new to see here. Move along!:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

I'd like to invert the thread : Forgotten Art Museums that no longer show anything we're interested in.

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For highly specific, eccentric values of "we". The lines I see in front of the Art Institute of Chicago, waiting to get in at opening time, out my shop window every morning don't support that conclusion for the usual value of "we".

The Carleton Watkins exhibit is still on display at Cantor Arts Center (Stanford).....not permanent but it is really very excellent.

Oh, the museums are certainly showing interesting stuff. But I found it odd that it was almost entirely in their traveling exhibit areas. For example, in Chicago they have a very good Josef Koudelka show in two large exhibit areas on the ground floor (there were a few panoramic landscapes here, recent work). My two teenage daughters were with me and, unusual for them, they both asked if they could have their own catalogue of the show.

But it is a weird thing to walk through museum after museum, seeing their permanent collection of paintings on display in evolutionary order, without any indication to the public that the evolution of painting just might have been affected in some way by what was going on in photography at the time. They also had a large Steichen exhibit, mostly of movie stars. I found almost all of this work weaker than I recalled, looking indistinguishable from any of the other Hollywood photographer types. It was just the "name that star" game with little else to interest me. Never high on my list, Steichen moves a notch down in my estimation.

Denver had a "from the collection of" show at the top of their new building. St. Louis had the small Brett Weston Show and a deceptively titled "Impressionist France" which I wasn't initially going to bother with due to the extra ticket price and the fact that I find Impressionists paintings boring. But I went to the desk to comment on how there were only thirteen photos in the entire museum and they said there were "a few photographs" in the Impressionist show. Turns out it was a wonderful photography show with a few paintings mixed in, which I ignored.

Nelsen-Atkins had a show of daguerreotype acquisitions--lots of fun. The Detroit Institute of Art had a big Bruce Weber show which I found uncommonly weak. Cleveland's photo gallery was down for an installation of a new exhibit. Akron was showing a room of O. Winston Link images (they were the ones who brought him to fame back in the early 1980s).

MOMA had a good but not great Robert Heinecken show and an odd hodgepodge of a show of photographs held together with the slenderest of themes, photographs made in a studio. The Met had a hallway of photographs from its permanent collection (rotating) and a large and difficult to decide upon Garry Winogrand show--a mix of photographs that he printed, those that he marked for printing but never did, and many that he shot (and maybe did not process) that were selected by others. There was also a very interesting Lucas Samaras show but there were very few photographs in that one, much to my surprise.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

So, lots and lots of photography. But almost all of it in traveling exhibit areas. Very little work from the California f/64 school.

But, of course, I could have gone to Houston for the Marville show or to Atlanta for the Wynn Bullock show. But ten museums does seem a fair sample nevertheless...

--Darin

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Originally Posted by BradS

The Carleton Watkins exhibit is still on display at Cantor Arts Center (Stanford).....not permanent but it is really very excellent.

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Oh, thank you for mentioning that. I was thinking it would have closed by the time I got back from the trip and I wouldn't get a chance to see it again. (I had tried to go back just before I left but showed up on a Tuesday--didn't realize they were closed on both Monday and Tuesday!).

--Darin

Have you looked at the "Landscape Photography" exhibited on this forum? (Enough said.)

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Originally Posted by Darin Boville

Two observations that might be of interest (and surprising) to people here:

1) Very little photography on display in permanent collection galleries. Lots of photography on display in temporary exhibit galleries.

2) Essentially no "straight photography" or f/64-style landscape work on display. A few prints scattered here and there. A tiny Brett Weston show in a stairway landing. Not a single Ansel Adams print on display anywhere.

--Darin

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This is consistent with my visits of top-level museums and galleries here in Canada. Photography is relegated to the traveling, temporary, special exhibits section, and what little photography there is is not landscapes. Except for when I traveled just to see Ansel and Salgado in Toronto, I have not seen a landscape photograph in a museum in some years. I think there may have been a couple in one traveling exhibit of very early French photographers, but memory is failing me.

Kirk Grittings pointed out to me that many Canadian museums own Burtynsky prints, and that may be so; they are not on display though.

Well, I'm lucky. I grew up (more or less) at the George Eastman House and can't remember everything I've seen there. Now I live in DC and there's all kinds of work to see, Muybridge to Winogrand to Lewis Baltz. But I take your point- photography is still a 'red-headed stepchild' to the art world, and that won't change in our lifetimes. But I've learned a lot from, and enjoyed a great deal of, the paintings and sculpture the art museums seem to prefer. We as photographers can all learn from all the artists, not just the photographers.

The Denver Art Museum had a huge retrospective of Robert Adams two years ago with hundreds of images and an accompanying 3 volume set of books. Last year the Phoenix Museum and the Santa Fe Museum of Art hosted a huge show of William Clift with the big book and this year the photo curator, Katherine Ware, hosted the year of photography, pulling a lot of work from the permanent collection. In Chicago this summer at the AIC the Koudelka show was stunning as was the Vivian Mayer show at the Harold Washington Library.

In my travels I have been very pleased with what I have seen with some of the best shows I have seen in my entire life but I plan my trips to a large degree to see photography shows rather than playing it hit or miss.

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The Art Institute of Chicago has a permanent gallery, but I think everyone misses it because it's a hallway.

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There is a difference between a permanent gallery and exhibiting work from the permanent collection. The OP is not clear on this point. At the Art Institute of Chicago most of the work displayed is from the permanent collection though it may not be up permanently nor should it as their permanent collection is enormous.

>>but I plan my trips to a large degree to see photography shows rather than playing it hit or miss.<<

That would, of course, be the very definition of a biased sample. :)

--Darin

There's one sense in which I feel very lucky to be interested in photography and working a block away from the Chicago museum for the last 30 years: I've long ago stopped walking through the painting galleries--nothing changes from year to year there. They have a lot of space, true, but it hardly ever changes, and that gets old fast.

However, there are, with the newer modern wing, two photo galleries dedicated to constant rotations of good shows (presently the Koudelka stuff and the Steichen show, which I happen to really like and have seen three times now). The museum's big rotating space shows the blockbuster shows that are uneven interest to me and not always paint-centric (currently Magritte), but the other "minor" arts are also served well with rotating shows--a great drawing show just closed and I haven't been over to see the new one, which is promising, and there's a weaving show rotated in at the moment, along with a temporary gallery of ancient Greek art in Egypt.

So sure, the paintings take up a lot of space and get the orderly presentation through history, but the meat of the place is the regularly changing shows outside of the painting category. In that sense, the fans of, for instance, Renaissance painting actually are getting the short end of the stick, having had to look at the same couple of rooms virtually unchanged for the last 30 years, at least, with, I don't think, hardly any special exhibits at all.

Visitors need also to be aware of the Gage photo gallery (Roosevelt University's social documentary gallery-- http://www.roosevelt.edu/gagegallery.aspx ), about a block north of the Art Institute, and Columbia College's wonderful Museum of Contemporary Photography ( http://www.mocp.org/ ), three or four blocks south, also on Michigan Ave.

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Originally Posted by Darin Boville

>>but I plan my trips to a large degree to see photography shows rather than playing it hit or miss.<<

That would, of course, be the very definition of a biased sample. :)

--Darin

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Yes but yours is a very narrow slice of time sample which doesn't really represent much either except a totally random choice of dates. next year you might get very different examples. You should do this every year for the next 20 and see what you get. :)

For those in the Los Angeles area or visiting, the Huntington Library has an Edward Weston landscape exhibit going on now.

http://huntington.org/WebAssets/Temp....aspx?id=15675

Press release

For the first year after the July opening, a new room devoted to photographs will display a rotation of examples from The Huntington’s collection of work by Edward Weston. The giant of modernist photography selected and printed for The Huntington 500 pictures concentrating on images that he had shot between 1937 and 1939, when he was on a Guggenheim grant. The installation will focus on some of his finest landscapes of California and the West.

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Originally Posted by Darin Boville

I just got back from a cross-country trip, coast of California to NYC and back by FJ. Forty-two days on the road and I hit a lot of art museums (Denver Art Museum, Museum of Nebraska Art, Nelsen-Atkins, St. Louis Art Museum, Detroit Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Akron Art Museum, and the Chicago Institute of Art). At each Museum I saw every exhibit, usually there from opening to close. (Not counting the Met. I was there all day and barely scratched the surface.)

Two observations that might be of interest (and surprising) to people here:

1) Very little photography on display in permanent collection galleries. Lots of photography on display in temporary exhibit galleries.

2) Essentially no "straight photography" or f/64-style landscape work on display. A few prints scattered here and there. A tiny Brett Weston show in a stairway landing. Not a single Ansel Adams print on display anywhere.

--Darin

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Wasn't there already a huge thread with this exact topic a few weeks ago?

What's the surprise - photography isen't art, that's why it is not in an ART museums permanent collection, but it is there in a temp show, when some money is poured over it, or a new canonical art history text examines the place of photography in the art world (or was it art's place in the age of mechanical reproduction?).

Some artists use photography as their pencil of choice, but "straight" landscape work is old and boring, and has little to do with art on most cases, hence it's absence in the above structure.

This is old news, as old as photography, which is not really very old at all, and only entered in to this discussion about art not so long ago.

Whose culture is represented by the artists you did see on your trip? Much Modern Art I've seen in museums is contrived--if it exists outside of museums it is tolerated by a culture, such as selected by an architect for a shopping mall, not embraced by it.
Landscape photography seen as Art has a deep cultural element on the personal level. It serves as a dream, or perhaps a reminder, of somewhere else in the world that has a connection somehow with the viewer. A really noteworthy landscape would, like a painting, have a common connection with a great many viewers and admittedly those are fewer and far between.
Photography exhibits in museums and galleries I've noticed tend to be concerned with common themes, seldom the landscape.
But that doesn't mean the Landscape is dead.
Where Landscape photography truly lives as "Art" is on the desk or walls in your own home or office, an image maybe you shot yourself on a beach last Summer, or perhaps a spared and framed leaf from an Ansel Adams calendar.
That makes that particular landscape a piece of your own "cultural archive."

Of course, there is the Dorothea Lange collection at Oakland Museum....not really landscape...but, it is more or less a permanent photo exhibit. They also have an interesting (temporary) exhibit coming in September.

Every alleged "art" museum around here has tons of photography in their permanent collections, and photography routinely on display as well. But often there seems to be a big gap between vintage works, or at least stuff already half a century back, and all the shock value or zippy-zappy current interactive stuff, or blatant digital-schmigital novelties printed as big as billboards, and probably trashed the week after the exhibit unless somebody with big enough walls "invests" in it. It's either one extreme or another. Not much elbow room for true variety. But hasn't that always been a bit of the trend? You're either already dead and beatified,or doing something ostentatious or outrageous to attract attention. With me, it's predictable enough to ignore paying for museum memberships, though I do get out from time to time for shows that particularly interest me. And when something gets outright advertised, no way I'm going to buy an expensive ticket just to stand in a long line to get herded past some famous impressionists paintings, for example. I'd rather travel to where some of these kinds of things are on permanent display and take my time enjoying them.

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Originally Posted by Mark Sampson

But I've learned a lot from, and enjoyed a great deal of, the paintings and sculpture the art museums seem to prefer. We as photographers can all learn from all the artists, not just the photographers.

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Well stated. That has also been my experience.

Thanks.

I'm not sure why traveling or short term exhibits are somehow less regarded than permanent exhibits of photography.

It's kinda a moot point with me anyway. In this part of the world I've seen so much classic photography here and there that a museum show isn't all that big a deal. Yeah, maybe somebody like Atget, who doesn't reach the West Coast often, and frankly looks better in a book, because lots of his original prints are in horrible shape. I never saw an actual AA print in my life until I just walked around the corner from one of my own early gallery gigs right in his own town. Everywhere. Brett Weston simply walked in. Now that guy could print! I had already seen a number of Edward Weston prints in private collections over the years. They certainly weren't either as rare or as obscenely expensive as today. Lot and lots of classic names I could mention. It was everywhere, at least in terms of anything that might be loosely classified as the West Coast School. Heck, the son in law of one of those guys just walked in here, just like he does almost every day. I get a lot of lore second hand. Interesting. But I'd rather just be printing my own work than looking at someone else's. There a time and place for each
aspect of the experience.

Just about every hospital in Fresno has an Ansel Adams print on a wall somewhere. It's always a joy to see them.
I remember one, Vernal Falls, was up in the room where Lamaze classes where taught (which I enjoyed immensely all the while sitting the floor telling my bride to "Breathe--breathe! Push-push!")

The Kaiser hospital up here has a big long wall of Imogene Cunningham prints - of course they're not the real deal, but high quality larger reproductions. Still, made
waiting for the dermatologist a distinctly more pleasant experience. Nobody else even noticed them.

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Originally Posted by Mark Sampson

Well, I'm lucky. I grew up (more or less) at the George Eastman House and can't remember everything I've seen there. Now I live in DC and there's all kinds of work to see, Muybridge to Winogrand to Lewis Baltz. But I take your point- photography is still a 'red-headed stepchild' to the art world, and that won't change in our lifetimes. But I've learned a lot from, and enjoyed a great deal of, the paintings and sculpture the art museums seem to prefer. We as photographers can all learn from all the artists, not just the photographers.

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I think it is fair to say that photographers and painters have had a symbiotic relationship over the past couple of centuries that has proved to be very rewarding for all. Consider the influence that Watkins had on American landscape painters and recall that Atget made a living supplying prints to painters for them to paint from. From a personal perspective I recently stumbled onto the California painters while researching Watkins and that has proved to be a gold mine: Here's a link to a local Plein Air painter that I discovered that is on a year long quest of painting a local creek each week for a year: http://www.donaldneff.com/creeks.html That spurred me into breaking out the typos and scouting out the local creeks and waterways for subject material.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Isaac Newton, 1676.

Thomas

That means you need to travel to big cities. London, NYC, Chicago, Paris, Amsterdam and countless more.


Drew wrote,
'I'd rather travel to where some of these kinds of things are on permanent display and take my time enjoying them.'

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Originally Posted by tgtaylor

I think it is fair to say that photographers and painters have had a symbiotic relationship over the past couple of centuries that has proved to be very rewarding for all.

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Good grief, don't let any MFA folk hear you say that aloud.

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Originally Posted by koh303

Good grief, don't let any MFA folk hear you say that aloud.

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What are you talking about? His statement reflects common knowledge and well accepted art history in academia.

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Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings

What are you talking about? His statement reflects common knowledge and well accepted art history in academia.

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Art History ≠ Academia ≠ MFA education institutions, and even if that was not the case, the above statement reflects only a dire conflict between moderiism and post modernism, the first being an existence where there are such things as well accepted common knowledge about anything or anywhere.

In the post modern era, there are no such absolute truths, and nowhere in fine art related academia is there such a thing as commonly accepted knowledge, especially when it comes to history, and more specifically the canonical art history as we read it in the US (or anywhere else for that matter). Photography is such a young thing, the language to read and describe it is still being written and and formed, where as the language used to read and analyze art has been around for a long long time, and has formal, publihed lexicons and definitions, none of which directly, or aptly apply to photography.

Art history changes every day, with new discoveries, and new undersandings. Walter Benjamin thought he new the truth, but all he said was no more then babling nonsense based on lack of knowledge. That did not hurt his work being a pillar of those commonly accepted whatevers in academia, until rosalind kraus ripped him a new one.

Until a while ago, atge, belloq, disfarmer and more recently vivian mayer were nothing more then names on a tombstone somewhere. Now - part of the commonly accepted course of history as we know it. Tomorrow, they might be replaced with other less or more influential folks. Just ask carrie mae weems...

Let's not get too hung up on museums. Museums seem to be mostly about collecting turning points in art; whereas galleries are mostly about presenting the efforts of contemporary artists. We need to visit museums to touch base with the innovative artists, and galleries to draw inspiration from the current practitioners.
I like exploring what I can do with more-or-less traditional photographic methods. Frantic art school shows often leave me completely puzzled. Museums will never collect my work, but some people hang my photos in their homes and look at them every day. For me, that's close enough to "art" to be satisfying.
If photographers are oriented towards some societal reverence, they're in it for the wrong reason. Do your photography because it's important to you. Some of us will make money at it; the rest will just be satisfied with a good print at the end of the day.

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Originally Posted by koh303

Art History ≠ Academia ≠ MFA education institutions, and even if that was not the case, the above statement reflects only a dire conflict between moderiism and post modernism, the first being an existence where there are such things as well accepted common knowledge about anything or anywhere.

In the post modern era, there are no such absolute truths, and nowhere in fine art related academia is there such a thing as commonly accepted knowledge, especially when it comes to history, and more specifically the canonical art history as we read it in the US (or anywhere else for that matter). Photography is such a young thing, the language to read and describe it is still being written and and formed, where as the language used to read and analyze art has been around for a long long time, and has formal, publihed lexicons and definitions, none of which directly, or aptly apply to photography.

Art history changes every day, with new discoveries, and new undersandings. Walter Benjamin thought he new the truth, but all he said was no more then babling nonsense based on lack of knowledge. That did not hurt his work being a pillar of those commonly accepted whatevers in academia, until rosalind kraus ripped him a new one.

Until a while ago, atge, belloq, disfarmer and more recently vivian mayer were nothing more then names on a tombstone somewhere. Now - part of the commonly accepted course of history as we know it. Tomorrow, they might be replaced with other less or more influential folks. Just ask carrie mae weems...

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Never-the-less your original statement reflects a total lack of knowledge about "MFA Folks". Thomas' statement "I think it is fair to say that photographers and painters have had a symbiotic relationship over the past couple of centuries that has proved to be very rewarding for all" is common knowledge. One of the icons of modern MFA programs, Van Deren Coke wrote a very influential book back in the 70's entitled "The Painter and the Photograph". It was hugely influential amongst MFA programs nationwide. I teach to MFA students and amongst MFA professors and your statement about "MFA Folks" is simply silly and inaccurate.

Just as this statement of yours is so profoundly inaccurate that I didn't bother even responding to it initially. Where are you getting your "facts".

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What's the surprise - photography isen't art, that's why it is not in an ART museums permanent collection

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You might not consider photography ART but the fact is that literally tons of photographs ARE in the permanent collections of ART museums. The first part of the statement is your opinion, fine. The second part is patently false. Even people at my level, I have many prints in Art museum permanent collections-the majority purchased. Your statement is simply wrong. The Art Institute of Chicago, under the classification "Works of Art", lists some 16,000+ photographs in their permanent collection. The High Museum lists 4,500 etc.

Are you sure you saw all the photography at MoMA and the Met? At MoMA, at least, there's always been a big couple of rooms housing 19th and 20th century work from the permanent collection. It rotates, but every time I've gone through there's been a healthy sampling of Weston, Strand, A. Adams, etc... Usually not the bigger, more bombastic late Adams stuff, but earlier, smaller stuff that came out of the beginnings of that tradition.

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Originally Posted by paulr

Are you sure you saw all the photography at MoMA and the Met? At MoMA, at least, there's always been a big couple of rooms housing 19th and 20th century work from the permanent collection. It rotates, but every time I've gone through there's been a healthy sampling of Weston, Strand, A. Adams, etc... Usually not the bigger, more bombastic late Adams stuff, but earlier, smaller stuff that came out of the beginnings of that tradition.

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I thought so. There were two temporary photo exhibits there when I was there (Heinecken and the studio show) and a big Polke show. Also one exhibit area closed off (upcoming Toulouse-Lautrec show). The MOMA web page has a feature to find all photography works on view: http://www.moma.org/collection/brows...rt_order=1&UC=

Don't see any landscapes there.

The Met did have a hallway area where they put up a rotating selection from their photo collection. Plus the big Winogrand and Steichen shows.

--Darin

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

I'd like to invert the thread : Forgotten Art Museums that no longer show anything we're interested in.

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Brilliant and quite right too!

RR

I don't get it, Darin. Photography certainly is a prime theme in many public venues around the Bay Area here. I think it will be a big component to the huge new
UC museum going in up the street. But you do have to factor for certain generational changes. If we're smack dab in the artistic adolescence of flagrant digital
manipulation right now, the new frontier is going to drift into interactive images and artsified amateur-equip movies, now that video clips can be taken even by DLSRS, phones, and Dick Tracy secret decoder rings. I'm all for that in terms of proliferation of vision. But the kind of contemplative static imagery put into frames and viewed on a wall that many of us like (including me) is going to take a seat somewhere on the back of the bus. Sure, there will be a revival and rebellion back
to the future, meaning the past ... and it's already going on. "Real film" and "real cameras" are actually getting admiration in this area, especially from the very
high-tech industry itself which has put it at risk. Kind reminds me of how the railroad barons hired ES Curtis to go out a photograph the last of the wild Indians,
so they could preserve something for posterity, just before they deliberately had all the buffalo shot and plains Indians starved. (Not 100% historically accurate,
cause a lot of that was already going on, and Curtis was already too late for much authenticity, but it was the storyline). I've repeatedly related how people working in the digi imaging industry itself would rather shoot film on their own time. Maybe all that proves it that work and recreation are two different things.
But it is a factor.

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Originally Posted by davisg2370

You went to the recent SPE conference, didn't you attend any of the lectures? That entire conference was made up of people that hold an MFA, are getting an MFA, or hope to get an MFA. Many of the pieces were influenced by, or even contained painting, that were on display at the walk through.

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I must say that after 5 minutes of trying to not step on peoples work, and trying not to notice the awesome noise all around me, i decided that was not a good way to show or look at work, and left. Before i did, what saw was lots of people looking for reassurance, in the "facts" and "common knowledge" which is expected of artists, who happen to be photographers. The photographers who just happened to be there, and whom are all art students, had nothing much to say (their work that is), but that is a limited point of view, as i really did not spent much time looking at work. Though after the many portfolio reviews and walk throughs i have done recently, this did not seem to be any different.

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Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings

One of the icons of modern MFA programs, Van Deren Coke wrote a very influential book back in the 70's entitled "The Painter and the Photograph". It was hugely influential amongst MFA programs nationwide. I teach to MFA students and amongst MFA professors and your statement about "MFA Folks" is simply silly and inaccurate.

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Well, let's ask Beaumont Newhall, Edward Steichen and John Zarkowski what they think about art, museums, MFA and their connection to painters, and i am fairly certain we will have the same answer Van Deren Coke - ask Zizek, baudrillard or Barthes, and you will get a totally different one, still that does not change anything. How do you measure benefit? In a leftfield reading of hostory, Jan Vermeer was the first photographer (or at least so thought peter greenway).

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Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings

Where are you getting your "facts".

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Probably at the same place you are, but perhaps i was less content say i am a success because i think i am or because someone of self imposed authority said so, which brings up the next issue:

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Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings

You might not consider photography ART but the fact is that literally tons of photographs ARE in the permanent collections of ART museums. The first part of the statement is your opinion, fine. The second part is patently false. Even people at my level, I have many prints in Art museum permanent collections-the majority purchased. Your statement is simply wrong. The Art Institute of Chicago, under the classification "Works of Art", lists some 16,000+ photographs in their permanent collection. The High Museum lists 4,500 etc.

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Just because a museum classifies something as art does not make it so. And besides, what is 16.5K pieces compared to the entire collection?

MFA's are a recent (less then 60 years), American invention, that perhaps at one point in time in history close to their inception (siskind, callahan etc.) might have had an education, moral agenda, but alas today all they are is a mega money maker. At SPE i learned that many schools have increased their once prestigious and thus tiny MFA programs from 7-9 students a year to 40-50 and more. After that was so sucsessful, some schools (notably UNM) started offering a PHD in photography as post to MFA in photo. More and more schools are adding such degrees, because why stop at a 100K$ MFA, when you can have the same people, sit in classes with the same professors, for the third time, learning the same nonsense, for the third time, for yet another 100K$ and even more prestige?
After all, what is it that you learn in an MFA program in the US, that was not (or could not have been) taught while attending a BFA program?, and asking that, only raises the question of what could anyone possibly LEARN when studying for a PHD in photo....?

But then again, i did not learn a thing during my MFA, other then how to be polite, and talk about other peoples work with admiration and praise even it was total crap, that did not change of the course of an entire, semester, and sometimes year, and sometimes people showed the same work they appllied with at their MFA thesis show.

So, my comment about MFA folk, was more of a cynical one, but that might have been hard to tell.

I've never read a word written by Van Deren Coke. But aside from the fact that he championed some pretty sicko work by some of his students, he was himself a
very capable tradition-esque photographer of pretty images, who otherwise have been considered passe by his own "art" standards.

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Just because a museum classifies something as art does not make it so. And besides, what is 16.5K pieces compared to the entire collection?

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I knew Beaumont Newhall and studied with him for a few years. I don't recall anything from him directly or from his books that would have disagreed with Thomas' statement.

I'd take their opinion over yours I think. You just make stuff up to suit your POV. Who are you BTW? Besides I didn't criticize your opinion about photography not being art-just your lack of knowledge. Remember your statement? "photography isen't art, that's why it is not in an ART museums permanent collection". But it is in ART museums permanent collections and in huge numbers. You said it wasn't-period. Now you want to talk percentages?

I've had the privilege of idle time and used it to tramp the halls of Australian art museums and commercial galleries for years looking out for traditional landscape photography because that's what I do. And I've talked to professional curators from the national level on down. The impression I form is that the world of a producing artist, a photographer even, carries a vastly different mind-set to that of a curator.

Curators champion anything that gives them job security, pay rises, promotion within the organisation, and enhanced professional status among their peers. At the present time collecting landscape photography is not a career path for them. Maybe with a surge of global warming anxiety traditional landscape photography may become valued as a symbol of good times a changin'. Maybe not.

It has been said, and there is an element of truth in it, that when you are behind camera in the presence of evocative subject matter and you must photograph the total knowledge of the world's photography curators is not of the slightest use to you. I reckon the way forward is not to crave the endorsement of art museums. The way forward is not make a living in art photography but rather to make a life in art photography.

That's strikes me as a rather cynical way to say that curators do their jobs as their museums want them done. Nope, they aren't working for photographers. You pay their bills and they will do our your way, too, I imagine. . .

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Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings

I knew Beaumont Newhall and studied with him for a few years. I don't recall anything from him directly or from his books that would have disagreed with Thomas' statement.

I'd take their opinion over yours I think.

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, do you mean newhall/steichen? of course you would, and given a chance, you, and them might re-do "the family of man" and call that art, because you stuck it in an art museum... Then argue about percentages. I would take Zizek's opinion over yours, and newhall's, i am sure.

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Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings

Who are you BTW?

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I am not sure i understood the question (but feel free to PM me if you want to know something specific).

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Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings

Besides I didn't criticize your opinion about photography not being art-just your lack of knowledge.
But it is in ART museums permanent collections and in huge numbers.

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The term 'huge', a lot like quantifying knowledge is a subjective thing.