A Ramble in Olmsted Parks. This exhibition features approximately 40 photographs made by Friedlander in the public parks and private estates designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), North America's premier landscape architect. The show celebrates the complex, idiosyncratic picture making of one of the country's greatest living photographers. It also marks the 150th anniversary of the design (1858) for Olmsted's masterpiece, New York's Central Park.
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the design for Central Park, Frederick Law
Olmsted’s 843-acre New York City masterpiece, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will
present Lee Friedlander: A Ramble in Olmsted Parks. On view from January 22 to May
11, 2008, the exhibition will feature 36 photographs, most never before on public
display. Friedlander describes these striking photographs, culled from a 20-year
exploration of public parks and private estates designed by North America’s premier
landscape architect, as “one photographer’s pleasurable and wandering glances at places
that bear the great vision of Mr. Olmsted.”
Renowned for his complex, idiosyncratic picture-making, Lee Friedlander began
photographing parks designed by Olmsted for a 1988 commission from the Canadian
Centre for Architecture in Montreal. The artist’s interest in landscape, however, began
much earlier, and he continued to photograph Olmsted parks long after he completed
the commission. In addition to numerous photographs of Central Park, Friedlander’s
series encompasses many other famous and beloved landscapes by Olmsted, including:
Brooklyn’s Prospect Park; Manhattan’s Morningside Park; World’s End in Hingham,
Massachusetts; and Cherokee Park in Louisville, Kentucky.
Rambling with his camera through the parks’ open meadows and dense understory,
Friedlander finds pure pleasure in Olmsted’s landscapes — in the meticulous stonework,
in the careful balance of sun and shade, and in the mature, weather-beaten trees and
their youthful issue. With this series, the artist has also explored a variety of camera
formats that provide surprising perspectives on each park’s intricate balance of features,
especially the overlapping layers of trees, leaves, grasses, architecture. The photographs
offer fresh appreciation for Olmsted parks as invented worlds designed to delight the eye
and offer, as Olmsted wrote, “healthful recreation” for the public. By providing worthy
testimony to our era’s renewed interest in preserving the finest landscape architecture of
the nineteenth century, Friedlander’s black-and-white photographs celebrate the essential
pleasures of seeing and being in these living works of art.
Born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1934, Lee Friedlander had his first solo show in 1963
at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York; four years later he exhibited
with Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand in the landmark New Documents exhibition at
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In his distinguished career, he has received
awards from the MacArthur Foundation and the Hasselblad Foundation and grants
from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His
photographs have been the subject of two dozen books, including Self Portrait, The
American Monument, Letters from the People, The Desert Seen, Sticks & Stones:
Architectural America, and Friedlander, the catalogue for his 2005 MoMA retrospective.
Lee Friedlander: A Ramble in Olmsted Parks is organized by Jeff L. Rosenheim,
Curator in the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication Lee Friedlander Photographs:
Frederick Law Olmstead Landscapes, featuring 89 images and an introduction by the
artist. The book will be released in January 2008 by D.A.P. ($85).
The exhibition will
also coincide with the publication of the Museum’s Winter 2008 Bulletin, featuring an essay on the history of the creation of Central Park by Morrison H. Heckscher,
Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman of the Metropolitan Museum’s American Wing.
Education programs include: Rambling in Central Park, a museum class for high school
students on May 3 at 11 a.m.; and gallery talks on January 29, February 5, March 12,
April 2, and April 18 at 10 a.m.
Metropolitan Museum
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street - New York
Hours:
Fridays and Saturdays 9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
Sundays, Tuesdays–Thursdays 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Suggested Admission (Includes Main Building and The Cloisters on the Same Day)
Adults $20.00, seniors (65 and over) $15.00, students $10.00
Members and children under 12 accompanied by adult free