Tag Archives: Morgan Library & Museum

LE CONVERSAZIONI: FILMS OF MY LIFE

Writers Patrick McGrath (photo by Basso Cannarsa) and Zadie Smith (photo by Steve Bisgrove) will discuss literature and film at the Morgan

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Thursday, November 6, $20, 7:00
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org
www.leconversazioni.it

Started in Capri in 2006 by founding artistic director Antonio Monda and Davide Azzolini, Italy’s Le Conversazioni literary festival returns to the Morgan Library on November 6 with a program examining the relationship between film and literature. Critic, director, journalist, producer, writer, and NYU professor Monda will moderate a discussion with a pair of British novelists, Patrick McGrath, author of such books as The Grotesque, Spider, Asylum, and Constance, and Zadie Smith, who has written such books as White Teeth, The Autograph Man, and The Embassy of Cambodia. They will focus on the influence specific films have had on their life and career. Previous Le Conversazioni presentations at the Morgan have brought together Julie Taymor and Jeffrey Eugenides, Isabella Rossellini and Salman Rushdie, Marina Abramovic and Daniel Libeskind, Martin Amis and Isa Buruma, and Jonathan Franzen and Paul Schrader.

A COLLECTIVE INVENTION: PHOTOGRAPHS AT PLAY / THIRTY YEARS THIRTY-ONE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Attributed to Pierre Pullis, “City Hall Subway Station,” platinum print, 1904 (photo courtesy Morgan Library)

A COLLECTIVE INVENTION: PHOTOGRAPHS AT PLAY
Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Daily through May 18, $12-$18 (free Fridays from 7:00 to 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

THIRTY YEARS THIRTY-ONE PHOTOGRAPHERS
Laurence Miller Gallery
20 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through April 26, free, 11:00 am – 5:30 pm
212-397-3930
www.laurencemillergallery.com

A pair of current photography shows are both displaying a similar curatorial bent in celebratory exhibitions, but with significantly different results. For the first time in its ninety-year history, the Morgan Library has mounted a photography show, organized by Joel Smith, who became the institution’s inaugural photography curator in 2012. “A Collective Invention: Photographs at Play,” on view through May 18, brings together more than eighty works from the Morgan’s holdings and private collectors. The pictures are arranged in sequence, each linked by similarities to the previous photo and to the next one, in form, content, subject matter, geometrical patterns, or other elements. Some connections are easy to spot: Underwood & Underwood Studio’s 1908 photomontage of Theodore Roosevelt is next to George G. Rockwood’s 1898 portrait “Theodore Roosevelt in Rough Rider Uniform,” which is followed by the anonymous “Three-in-One Portrait of Johann Most, Peter Kropotkin, and Mikhail Bakunin” and Tomoko Sawada’s “ID400 (101-200),” multiple photographs Sawada took of herself in photobooths. But other combinations are not nearly as obvious, which is not necessarily a problem until you also realize that consecutive photos could have more than one similarity, and since the accompanying text identifies a single connection, visitors can get the feeling they are wrong if they see a different relationship. This aspect of the exhibition makes it a kind of guessing game and detracts from the overall impact of the show; however, Smith might have done it this way at least in part because the Morgan is relatively new to the world of photography and he didn’t have a lot to work with. I went back a second time to experience the show just focusing on the quality of the photographs themselves, and it still felt lacking. There are some gems here, including Acme Photography Bureau’s 1937 “Carving Lincoln on Rushmore Granite,” Heinz Hajek-Halke’s 1928-32 “Erotik—Ganz Groß! (Erotic—In a Big Way!),” Larry Sultan’s 1991 “Dad Looking into Pool,” and the anonymous 1963 “Montgomery Clift in Freud: The Secret Passion,” but not nearly enough for me to recommend the show. But hey, it’s only the Morgan’s first try. Hopefully they won’t take to heart the warnings of the final piece, Tim Davis’s 2013 “Photography Liberation Front,” an arrangement of found signs forbidding photography. (On April 15, the special program “Accumulated Wisdom: The Collector as Inventor” will feature talks and performances with Davis, Carrie Cooperider, Nina Katchadourian, Thomas Y. Levin, and others.)

Burk Uzzle’s 1970 “New Mexico Highway” vintage gelatin silver print is part of Laurence Miller’s thirtieth anniversary exhibition (photo courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery)

Over in Midtown, Laurence Miller is celebrating his gallery’s thirtieth anniversary with “Thirty Years Thirty-One Photographers,” selecting works from approximately 250 exhibitions over the past three decades. Instead of just choosing its greatest hits, the gallery has put together an extremely well curated collection of photographs that subtly achieves precisely what the Morgan tried to do. Without announcing it or turning it into a game, Miller has organized the photos so that they organically flow one into another, both as a representation of the gallery’s sensibility as well as by theme, content, shape, subject, etc. Michael Spano’s 1978 “Vertical Subway” leads to Toshio Shibata’s 2008 “Okawa Village, Tosa County, Kochi Prefecture,” which is followed by Burk Uzzle’s 1970 “New Mexico Highway,” the thick white center line echoing Shibata’s horizontal bridge and Spano’s vertical composition in addition to the lights of the store and the road in the next photo, Uzzle’s 2007 “Desert Prada,” after which comes Lee Friedlander’s 1971 “Knoxville, Tennessee,” an empty street with a tilted triangular road sign in the middle. A rectangular light and title link Roger Mertin’s 1968 photo from his “Plastic Love Dream” series and Laurence Bach’s 1978 “Paros Dream Book #8,” while two photos each by Joan Colom and Helen Levitt depict anonymous people crowding the frame. But the connections alone are not what make the show, which runs through April 26, so successful; instead, it’s the high quality of the work — there are also photos by Emmet Gowin, Diane Arbus, Fred Herzog, Ray K. Metzker, Petah Coyne, Aaron Siskind, and Eadweard Muybridge, among others — arranged in such a way that you leave with an appreciation of the gallery’s unique identity, which centers on intriguing landscapes, street photography, fascinating experimentation, and a bold mix of black-and-white and color.

DEGAS, MISS LA LA, AND THE CIRQUE FERNANDO

Edgar Degas, “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando,” oil on canvas, 1879, (© National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY)

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Through May 12, $10-$15
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

The arrival of Edgar Degas’s lovely 1879 painting “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando” on these shores is reason enough to cheer. But curator Linda Wolk-Simon has taken the canvas, on loan from the National Gallery in London, and made it the focus of the wonderful exhibit “Degas, Miss La La, and the Cirque Fernando,” continuing at the Morgan Library through May 12. Shown at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1879, the painting depicts popular circus performer Miss La La suspended in midair, her teeth clenched on a rope. The Prussian-born Miss La La, who was also known as the Black Venus and La Femme Cannon, among other nicknames, is like an angel rising to the heavens, her angled limbs and white boots and costume echoing the big top’s unique architectural structure, something that Degas actually struggled to re-create. The lines and colors of the rope, the windows, the arches, the dress, and her body come together in spectacular fashion, albeit with a gentleness that was probably not apparent at the live performance itself, which Degas attended several times. No other circus or audience members are shown; it is as if the viewer is experiencing a private show performed only for them. Degas chose to paint this act instead of another of Miss La La’s highly touted tricks, in which she uses her teeth to hold up a cannon weighing more than 150 pounds while it fires away, perhaps because this one is more elegant and spiritual. Hanging in the middle of the far wall on the second floor of the Morgan, the painting is surrounded by preparatory sketches, books, posters, letters, and related works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henry-Gabriel Ibels, and Tiepolo that place Degas’s masterpiece in historical context while also revealing his fascinating creative process. It all comes together in a kind of artistic three-ring circus, highlighted by a dynamic centerpiece that deservedly rises to the top.

DÜRER TO DE KOONING: 100 MASTER DRAWINGS FROM MUNICH

Jacopo Pontormo, “Two Standing Women,” light and dark red chalk, stumped, after 1530? (courtesy of Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Münich)

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 6, $10-$15 (free Friday 7:00 – 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

For the 250th anniversary of Munich’s Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in 2008, the Morgan Library sent over one hundred drawings for a special show. The German museum, which has never before lent works to an American institution for a single exhibition, has now returned the favor, sending across the pond one hundred master drawings from its extensive collection. Divided into two galleries by chronology, “Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich” is a treasure trove of exceptional pieces, many by artists rarely seen in the Morgan. The first gallery features works from Italy, Germany, Holland, and France, dating from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, including Jacopo Pontormo’s red chalk “Two Standing Women,” Rembrandt’s “Saskia Lying in Bed, a Woman Sitting at Her Feet,” and Albrecht Dürer’s “Portrait of Kaspar Nützel,” in addition to sheets by Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Michelangelo, and Friedrich. The modern gallery is highlighted by drawings from an unusually wide range of artists not often displayed together in the same room, from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s “Nude Girl in Interior” and Arnulf Rainer’s “Adalbert Stifter (Death Mask)” to Willem de Kooning’s “Standing Man” and Georg Baselitz’s “Duck Pond,” as well as works by Bruce Nauman, Franz Marc, David Hockney, Sigmar Polke, Jean Dubuffet, Max Beckmann, Larry Rivers, Georg Baselitz, Emil Nolde, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, and Vincent van Gogh. Also on view at the Morgan right now are “Fantasy and Invention: Rosso Fiorentino and Sixteenth-Century Florentine Drawing,” “Beatrix Potter: The Picture Letters,” and “Happy Holidays from the Morgan!,” consisting of Charles Dickens’s original manuscript of A Christmas Carol, Truman Capote’s handwritten “A Christmas Vacation,” a letter from George Washington written at Valley Forge on Christmas Day, 1777, and other seasonal paraphernalia.

DAN FLAVIN: DRAWING

Dan Flavin, “eight ‘monuments’ for V. Tatlin,” black ballpoint ink on white paper (collection of Stephen Flavin)

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 1, $10-$15 (free Friday 7:00 – 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

“Dan Flavin: Drawing” is a revealing, illuminating look at a little-known, fascinating side of the innovative New York-based light sculptor. On view at the Morgan through July 1, the exhibit focuses on charcoals, pencils, inks, and watercolors made by Flavin over four decades, from preparatory drawings for his fluorescent sculptures to minimalist landscapes, portraits, and depictions of one of his favorite subjects, sailboats along the Hudson River and out on Long Island. Flavin’s use of line in his drawings is striking, particularly in the sailboat sketches and planned monuments for Russian avant-gardist Vladimir Tatlin. Flavin also pays tribute to a wide range of writers and artists in these works, many made in small three-by-five lined notebooks, including Alexander Calder, Apollinaire, Donald Judd, James Joyce, Barnett Newman, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Sol LeWitt, Titian, Jasper Johns, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Constantin Brancusi. The exhibition ranges from such abstract, blotchy drawings as “The Act of Love” and “untitled (tenements in the rain)” to the Japanese-inspired “a mechanical interior” to the architectural “from no. 1 of Dec 19, 1963 (in pink)” and “(to the young woman and men murdered in Kent State and Jackson State Universities and to their fellow students who are yet to be killed),” which create intriguing spaces on paper.

Dan Flavin, “untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3,” pink, yellow, blue, and green fluorescent light, 1977 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Several of the later pieces that more directly relate to his light sculptures were actually made by his first wife, Sonja, and his son, Stephen, supervised by Flavin, who died in 1996 at the age of sixty-three. Also on display are nearly fifty works from his personal collection that reveal his many influences, with drawings by such Hudson River School painters as Sanford Robinson Gifford, John Frederick Kensett, and Aaron Draper Shattuck, such Japanese masters as Hiroshige and Hokusai, and such friends and colleagues as Judd, Robert Morris, and LeWitt, in addition to Toulouse-Lautrec, Hans Arp, George Grosz, Piet Mondrian, and Hans Richter. To put it all in perspective, the Morgan has installed two of Flavin’s light sculptures. In the upstairs Engelhard Gallery, “untitled (to the real Dan Hill) 1a” leans against a corner near the main entrance, an eight-foot-high single construction giving off pink, yellow, green, and blue fluorescent light, in stark contrast to the mostly black-and-white drawings throughout the rest of the room. But the real gem is “untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3,” which deservedly stands alone in the downstairs Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery, a beautiful corner grid of six horizontal lights facing out, six vertical lights against the wall, creating soft, meditative glows that are at the heart of Flavin’s raison d’être.

ROBERT BURNS AND “AULD LANG SYNE”

Robert Burns, “Auld Lang Syne” (detail), autograph manuscript written within a letter, dated (September 1793), to George Thomson

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 5, $15 (free Fridays 7:00 – 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

Tonight at midnight, people around the world will break out into the same song, “Auld Lang Syne,” welcoming in 2012, but how many of those revelers know the true story about the famous tune? The Morgan Library is currently hosting a splendid little exhibition that examines the details behind the music and lyrics of the popular ditty, whose three-word title translates to “old,” “long,” “since.” It was Scottish poet Robert Burns who combined the familiar music and lyrics for publisher James Johnson in 1796, although there were different versions both before and after, from a 1667 lover’s lament and a 1760s Caledonian country dance to William Shield’s 1782 opera, Rosina, and Rudyard Kipling’s 1900 Boer War revision. The show, which comprises original letters, manuscripts, portraits, rare books, and even an arrangement by Beethoven, also features a strong online component where you can read and listen to snippets of the evolution of the complete song, so you’ll be able to surprise your fellow partyers tonight by breaking out into all four Burns stanzas, including “We twa hae run about the braes, / And pu’t the gowans fine; / But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot, / Sin auld lang syne.” In addition, the Morgan will be celebrating the eve of Burns Day on January 24 with the special concert “Days of Auld Lang Syne: Euan Morton Sings Songs of Scotland,” in which the singer and actor will perform Scottish works, accompanied by composer Bryan Reeder on piano. (Also currently on view at the Morgan are “Charles Dickens at 200,” “Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan,” and “David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre.”

CAROLING AT THE MORGAN

Charles Dickens’s original marked-up manuscript of A CHRISTMAS CAROL is on view at the Morgan

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Friday, December 16, free, 6:30 – 8:30
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

As part of its free Friday programming on December 16, the Morgan Library will feature singers from the Mannes College the New School for Music performing Christmas carols throughout the museum from 6:30 to 8:30. And you can continue the holiday spirit at the Morgan exhibition “Charles Dickens at 200,” which celebrates the Christmas Carol scribe’s life and career with original manuscripts, letters, books, photographs, illustrations, caricatures, and more. There will be a docent tour of the show, which runs through February 12, on Sunday at 2:00. As Dickens wrote in the preface to the book in 1843, “I have endeavoured, in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it!” To which we add, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”