Dear friends,
I’m thrilled to invite you to join me for a special field trip to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to experience The New Art: American Photography, 1839–1910.
This exhibition presents a bold new history of American photography from the medium’s birth in 1839 to the first decade of the 20th century.
Major works by lauded artists such as Josiah Johnson Hawes, John Moran, Carleton Watkins, and Alice Austen are shown in dialogue with extraordinary photographs by obscure or unknown practitioners made in small towns and cities from coast to coast. Featuring a range of formats, from daguerreotypes and cartes de visite to stereographs and cyanotypes, the show explores the dramatic change in the nation’s sense of itself that was driven by the immediate success of photography as a cultural, commercial, artistic, and psychological preoccupation.
In 1835, even before the nearly simultaneous announcement of the invention of the new art in Paris and London, the American philosopher essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson noted with a remarkable vision: “Our Age is Ocular"
I invite you to kick off the day with a coffee at Matto Espresso, located at 1144 Lexington Avenue, at 9:45 AM.
If you can’t make it for coffee, we’ll meet directly at the steps of The Met at 10:30 AM.
This field trip is free to join, but please note that you’ll be responsible for your entrance fee. However, I can bring one guest as part of my membership, so the first person to sign up gets in for free!
Let me know if you’ll be joining. Looking forward to exploring this incredible exhibition together!