Landscape photography: dead and forgotten at art museums?

[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

[jb7]

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...

[Jmarmck]

Depressing

[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

[ImSoNegative]

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

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.

[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.

[John Kasaian]

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.

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!

[Drew Wiley]

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

[bigdog]

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. ...

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.

EDIT: Oh, and there's this:

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

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

[mdarnton]

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

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!