Magnum: even today, with photography and photographers every where, the reputation of this 62-year-old photojournalism cooperative is magic. The agency opened a gallery on the left bank of Paris last Friday (it already has one on the right bank), and it wasn’t hard to get interest from the general press here — in this case, I did a short article on the gallery, with a slide show, for The Daily Beast.

Magnum’s space in Saint Germaine-des-Pres, near Brasserie Lipp and Cafe de Flore, has started out with an exhibition curated by Robert Delpire, himself a photography legend. It was Delpire, now in his 80s, who published Robert Frank’s landmark Les Americains in 1958, when Frank hadn’t yet found a publisher in the U.S. — among other things.

The show is called demain/hier and it showcases works by the younger generation of Magnum members, those who joined after 2000. They include Alessandra Sanguinetti (one image from her On the Sixth Day is above), Trent Parke, Mark Power, and Cristina Garcia Rodero.

But the gallery shows older works too, and it’s hoping to create a salon-like atmosphere. As I wrote:

Magnum wants visitors to look, linger, buy and eventually perhaps even sip Champagne [there]. The choice of [the coop’s] name, after all, had everything to do with the founders’ serious affinity for champers.

Sounds like another reason to browse and to linger in that neighborhood. For evidence, check out the Beast‘s slide show. 

Photo: Courtesy Magnum  

When the Brooklyn Museum’s “What’s Happening” brochure landed on my desk recently — a close-up of Tina Turner’s shining, smiling face on its cover — it was hard not to spend a little time reading about Who Shot Rock-and-Roll, its exhibition of photographs capturing the music of the baby-boomer generation. (Which is to say, me!)

Whatever you may think about the idea that rock photography is an art form, the show — which I breezed through far too quickly last Friday afternoon — is interesting and fun to see.

But a much smaller item in the brochure caught my eye, too: the announcement of a Teen Guide to Art, “created by teens for teens to make looking at art in the Museum both fun and thought-provoking.”

This does raise a question: outside of school trips, how are art museums engaging with teenagers?

Brooklyn’s guide — just 12 pages — calls itself unique. I found it both charming and somewhat lacking — but understandably so. On the charm side, it’s practical (telling where to get a map and where the elevators are) and doesn’t condescend. I like that it explains how to read labels (including a decoding of accession information) and urges teens to use their own eyes. The works it chooses to explicate, however briefly — Pat Steir’s Everlasting Waterfall, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party and Kehinde Wiley’s Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps — would not have been my choices, but… Maybe the next time, the teens will choose at least one work made before 1975 — more diversity!

Here’s the link. (Brooklyn also has a teen page on Facebook, btw, but I didn’t go there.)

Roaming around the web — to perhaps a dozen museums, most but not all of the usual suspects — it seems that Brooklyn’s claim to be unique in this may be correct.

[Read more…] about Museums And Teenagers: Care And Feeding — UPDATED

Since last week, when I wrote about Art and Illusions: Masterpieces of Trompe-l’oeil From Antiquity To The Present at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, I’ve learned that the Center for Contemporary Culture there has a companion exhibition which is just as interesting. Maybe less amusing, though.

It’s called Manipulating Reality: How Images Redefine the World. The works of 23 artists, from around the world, including the U.S., are on display: Andreas Gursky, Cindy Sherman, Aernout Mik, Gregory Crewdson among them.  

The show’s concept is hardly new — that photography and video art may falsify, as well as record, the world, that what you see is not what you get. But it goes hand in hand with trompe l’oeil. And once again, there’s a very good website, with wonderful images and much explanation.

I’ve put a sampling of images here — Rosemary Laing’s Groundspeed above left and Thomas Demand’s Presidency V below right.

Don’t know why I’m fixated on the Strozzi: maybe it’s just that I do long to visit Italy again.

Photos: Courtesy Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina

 

The George Eastman House needs you! Maybe.

Last April, it announced the creation of The Center for the Legacy of Photography, as well as Notes On Photographs, a collaborative wiki website at which curators, conservators, collectors and the general public would be able to share knowledge about photographic prints — the camera, the process, the inscriptions, the age, and so on.

I wrote about it all then, and now there’s more to report. A recent Eastman House newsletter announced that the site, “dedicated to illustrating key aspects of a photographer’s work,” is now available.

In truth, the site needs much more content. Emily Welch, the project’s manager, tells me that the pages for Alvin Langdon Coburn, Lewis Wickes Hine, and Frederick Henry Evans (his Lincoln Cathedral, 1895, is at right) are “well-populated.” Have a look.

But this is where you may come in — at three possible levels. Those pages are curated, by “invited” curators with proven expertise who volunteer to take responsibility for an article or topic. The curator assesses contributed information and revises a page as appropriate. It’s all archived in the wiki histories, so everyone can see decisions about content.

Say you’re not in that category.

[Read more…] about Notes On Photographs Comes To Life: A Wiki

It’s been a long road, but the Museum for African Art is really coming into its own: the opening of its new building, on Fifth Avenue and Central Park North in New York, a year or so from now, will be transformative.

I had a chance to take a hard-hat tour of the premises the other day — not to mention to see it from the nearby, lakeside Dana Discovery Center in Central Park, a glorious spot on that sunny fall day — and to hear the plans of director Elsie McCabe Thompson and chief curator Enid Schildkrout. They, and their trustees and staff, seem to have taken care of all the details, big and small. For example, on the small (but important) side, the restaurant and theater will have separate entrances, so that they may be used when the museum is closed — but visitors will still see some African art as they enter.

On the big side, it will have more ambitous exhibits — one of the inaugural shows, Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria (photo above shows one piece), is co-organized by the British Museum and the Fundación Marcelino Botín; there are three more to fill 16,000 sq. ft. of galleries.

In contemporary art, one inaugural exhibition is Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist, the first museum retrospective of Ibrahim El Salahi, a pioneer of the “Khartoum School” who’s known as the godfather of African modernism. (Who knew?) 

The new building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, also allows the museum to collect art, instead of just exhibit it, for the first time (that’s why it’s name used “for,” instead of “of”). It is actively seeking gifts.  

McCabe is building something more akin to the Asia Society than to a traditional museum, with a range of programs.

[Read more…] about The New Museum For African Art Is Rising