The hub of the downtown scene in Utica -- in addition to the aforementioned brewery -- is a scruffy stretch of Genessee Street with the glorious Stanley Theater on one side and the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute on the other. In addition to its association with Pratt, the Institute includes a museum, a performing arts series, and a school of art for community members. We recently visited the museum, which includes Fountain Elms, a restored 1850s Italianate mansion that was one of the homes of the founding family and contains their collection of decorative art. Connected to this display of lush, overwrought, Victorian splendor is the high contrast of a 1960s Philip Johnson-designed museum wing that displays the more modern pieces of the collection as well as changing exhibitions. The permanent collection contains basically one of everything, as noted in this description from their web site:
"The art collection features more than 25,000 American 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century paintings, drawings, sculptures, 19th-century decorative arts, photographs, European paintings, and European and Asian works on paper. There are works in the collection by Copley, Dali, Frankenthaler, Kandinsky, Mondrian, O'Keeffe, Picasso, Pollock, Prendergast, Rothenberg, Stella and Whistler. Also featured is the popular "Voyage of Life" series by Thomas Cole. Decorative arts makers included are John Henry Belter, Herter Brothers, Alexander Roux and Tiffany & Co."
While we were there, we enjoyed a fascinating show called "Picturing Eden." which "...features the photographic work of 37 internationally recognized artists who examine Paradise as a mythic, many-faceted place, one of contemplation and restoration as well as loneliness and despair." While there were plenty of expected forms of photography, from traditional to hyper-realistic digital manipulations, some of the most beautiful, subtle, and memorable work -- to me, at least -- were the two photographers who used nature directly in their work. Nope, not as a subject, but as a participant. One photographer left photosensitive paper outdoors and let the acids and chemicals of decaying organic matter form patterns of great complexity and fragility through natural chemical reactions. Another printed ghostly images from the Vietnam war directly onto live leaves which then dried and were entombed in glass.
Photography has often left me a bit cold -- it seems to me more a record of something than an expression of something. This exhibit changed my mind profoundly by showing me some of the new ways creative people are using this old technology to express feelings and stories of humanity's dreams, hopes, and failures.
