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November 9, 2005
Mmmmm, Memling! Museums in New York...
I went to two big shows in New York City this last weekend - the Fra Angelico show at the Met and the Memling portraits at the Frick. I can cheerfully recommend the Memling show for scale, focus, and interest. Tastes differ, but if you really prefer Italian early Renaissance you'd find 20 Memling portraits more bearable than if you preferred Northern Renaissance and were confronted with tiny panel after tiny panel of the Blessed Angelico's work (75 paintings and drawings).
The two shows provide a really obvious contrast for people who are interested in the effect produced by hanging similar works in dissimilar spaces. The Frick has the Memling show of 20 works about the size of a sheet of printer paper is in two small rooms -- the show is downright intimate. The Fra Angelico show, 75 works of about the same dimensions (there are a FEW larger works, central panels of multi-part altarpieces), are in a huge space -- the lower floor of the big Robert Lehman pavilion octagon.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at November 9, 2005 6:41 AM