Photography in a new light in major US museums

MoMA NYC

From the New York Times issue of March 20, there is an interesting piece, The Lens Rises in Stature. This is a take on how the major US museums are looking at photography today to better cater for a hungry audience of people who want to see photography shows. It's true people want to see photography shows, these shows are popular. And just as camera artists can always do it better, so too can public art museums.

Quentin Bajac, who recently arrived from the Pompidou Center in Paris to run the Museum of Modern Art’s photography department, had a somewhat different take on the way the Internet has changed things. We’re in a time when there are too many photographs online, he said. We have to help people learn to swim in that new ocean of images. He sees his mission as educating the eye. 

 Although Mr. Bajac has yet to curate his first show at MoMA, he signaled an approach different from the one seen in the exhibition currently on view: Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light. While such monographic exhibitions are important, Mr. Bajac said, I’m thinking of photography within a far broader context - with film and painting, architecture and drawing - making connections that show it to be equal in status with all the arts.

Britt Salvesen of the Los Angeles museum says she believes this generation of curators approach the medium with a broader outlook in part as a response to the way artists are using photography. You can’t draw boundaries anymore, she said. 

You can read the full story HERE.