Study: Mass MoCA

The Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) in North Adams, MA is a fascinating if somewhat out of the way place - well worth the six-hour's round-trip drive we took to visit there. The museum is unusual among those I've visited across the US and Europe in one regard: There were, at the time of our visit, unutilized spaces between some of the large exhibits that, to me, served as welcomed visual palette cleansers, providing both a physical and conceptual break between courses in the feast that is Mass MoCA's collection of permanent & visiting works.

With my eye already primed & mind engaged by some of first artworks we saw, I found myself viewing these empty spaces not as interiors of an old mill-building or warehouse but as works unto themselves - the museum's negative space; massive stark arrangements of light and shadow. The thought carried over to inform the single portrait at the series' end.

Although nearly all of the photographs in this portfolio are in color, the images here exploit the abstracting power of black & white photography.

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Images from another museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, are available here.

As always, comments are welcome.