{"id":978,"date":"2012-02-08T22:04:42","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T03:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/?p=978"},"modified":"2012-02-08T22:04:42","modified_gmt":"2012-02-09T03:04:42","slug":"spies-in-the-house-of-art-at-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/08\/spies-in-the-house-of-art-at-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Spies in the House of Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Francesca<\/a>
Francesca Woodman, Blueprint for a Temple, 1980.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Contrary to its title, there\u2019s nothing particularly subversive about \u2018Spies in the House of Art<\/a>,\u2019 the Metropolitan Museum\u2019s enticingly titled exhibition of its contemporary photography collection, which opened yesterday.\u00a0 Photos, films and videos take museum display and visitor responses as subject matter, but the mood of the best pieces is more fond criticism than biting institutional critique.\u00a0 Still, by bringing the myriad ways we navigate the museum experience to our conscious mind, the show counteracts purely passive viewing pleasure.<\/p>\n

A standout is Francesca Woodman\u2019s 1980 \u2018Blueprint for a Temple.\u2019 Completed a year before her untimely death and marking a major shift from her small scale photos, this 15 foot high photo collage of a Greek temple supported by her friends dressed as caryatids and printed on blue architectural blueprint paper playfully remakes ancient culture while forces a connection between past and present that resonates with the Met\u2019s newly crafted Moroccan court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s second major highlight, Rosalind Nashashibi\u2019s and Lucy Skaer\u2019s 16mm film \u2018Flash in the Metropolitan Museum\u2019 from 2006 was shot at night with a flash strobe as the artists moved through the museum, momentarily illuminating Greek ceramics one minute, African or Medieval European sculpture the next.\u00a0 Unclear images, seen for a moment in varying scales and unflattering angles turn usual museum display on its head while creating an alluringly mysterious anthropological study that is equal parts \u2018Blair Witch Project\u2019 and \u2018Mixed Up File of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler.\u2019<\/p>\n

Less familiar work comes across as amusing and fresh, like Laura Larson\u2019s photograph of a display in the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia which delights in pointing out the tasteless clash of style in a Regency settee, a wallpapered landscape and patterned marble floor.\u00a0 Sophie Calle\u2019s text and image of a gender-ambiguous blind person describing the \u2018terrific ass\u2019 of a sculpture in Paris\u2019 Rodin museum invites reflection on our own ideas about beauty.<\/p>\n

By comparison, a photo of a shelf of stored artworks by Louise Lawler, an image of a painting by Tim Davis with his flash blotting out the subject\u2019s face and a video by Lutz Bacher following a young adolescent through the Picasso Museum in Paris look at art stored, reproduced or visited in unexpected if not particularly compelling ways. \u00a0\u00a0In a sense, the Met itself undermines the less nuanced work in the show \u2013 the stunning artwork and displays encountered on the way to the 2nd<\/sup> floor photo galleries are a tough act to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contrary to its title, there\u2019s nothing particularly subversive about \u2018Spies in the House of Art,\u2019 the Metropolitan Museum\u2019s enticingly titled exhibition of its contemporary photography collection, which opened yesterday.\u00a0 Photos, films and videos take museum display and visitor responses as subject matter, but the mood of the best pieces is more fond criticism than biting … <\/p>\n

Read more “‘Spies in the House of Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[103,104,105,109,108,111,102,17,107,106,110,53],"class_list":["post-978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features-commissions","tag-film","tag-francesca-woodman","tag-laura-larson","tag-louise-lawler","tag-lucy-skaer","tag-lutz-bacher","tag-metropolitan-museum-of-art","tag-photography","tag-rosalind-nashashibi","tag-sophie-calle","tag-tim-davis","tag-video-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BDOD-fM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":982,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions\/982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}