We have to head home today but we are determined to get to the Met and
it opens at 10 and it requires walking through Central Park which it turns out
is one of Izzy’s favorite places in this city.
We check out Cornelia Parker’s Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) on the
roof, and I’m particularly delighted to see Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play, which is a teeny
but fascinating exhibit of photos of crimes and criminals. It gives Izzy the shivers when she goes to
bed that night, but I love learning about the photographer Weegee who claimed
some like crime-sixth-sense that always got him to the scene first but really
just had a scanner in his apartment across the street from the police
station.
The exhibit also included what might be my favorite piece of museum
writing ever. Describing a photo of a
woman’s deshabillé body in
the back of a car, by an unknown photographer, the curator writes:
“The anonymous cameraman (whose shadow can be seen in the image) may
have worked for the police but was more likely a newspaper photographer. His editors must have considered this an
absolute bull’s-eye combination of titillation, voyeurism, and fig-leaf
moralizing that lets readers have their cake and eat it too.
“Fig-leaf moralizing.” That’s a
keeper!
With some great views of the Manhattan skyline lingering in our minds,
we Laskins head north to kind of boring ol’ Massachusetts. Fortunately Hamilton is SO LONG that we
didn’t quite finish it on the way down so we listen to more on the way
home. Of course, we know how it ends.
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