Flutterby™! : Ansel Adams at 100

Charlene and I took the day off and went into the city to see Ansel Adams at 100. I didn't think it was possible after my previous few visits, but my opinion of SFMOMA has plummeted even further. If you're an Ansel Adams fan you'll probably want to go see this, but the appeal of the exhibit is strictly the work, the organization is absolutely horrible, I could find no rhyme to why one picture was set next to another, and the accompanying prose was unhelpful, and often not only didn't draw on basic knowledge of Adams' work, life, and the artistic context in which he worked, but was actively misleading about the breadth and nature of his output.

Whatever you do, don't get the audio tour, there'll be much more insightful commentary from those around you in the crowd.

This was one of the worst examples of a museum pimping itself out to a name rather than drawing on institutional knowledge and holdings I've seen. Avoid the crowds, head over to the Friends of Photography half a block east on Mission, and then spend the rest of the time you would've spent dealing with annoying docents up on Geary looking at photography in the galleries there.

Speaking of which, in the Fraenkel Gallery we saw Nicholas Nixon's Lovers series. If you liked the recent David Steinberg pictures, Nixon's work is similar.

We also dropped in on the Peter Steinhauer work at the Scott Nichol's Gallery. Still nice images, but not nearly as striking at that size. Worth the trip, and they had better Ansel Adams pictures than SFMOMA too.