Let’s get the 800-pound gorilla out of the way. “diane arbus: in the beginning”—the lack of capitalization isn’t a typo, but a stylistic choice made by the grammarians at the Met Breuer—is a notable exhibition for a variety of reasons, not least its installation. Viewers expecting a polite array of photographs—arranged chronologically, perhaps, or by theme—can look elsewhere. Nor should they count on continuous wall space. Jeff Rosenheim, the Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs, has opted to display the work on several rows of floor-to-ceiling panels set apart four feet or so; each panel has a single image displayed on both sides. The placement of photos is catch-as-catch-can, presumably to emphasize the open-ended nature of an artist working at the beginning of her career. This hall-of-mirrors approach is a distraction—what with the back-and-forth of museumgoers and our own shuttling around to get a lone peek at an Arbus picture. If Rosenheim’s intent was to establish a museological parallel with the borderline figures to whom Arbus was drawn, well—point taken. Still, isn’t a curator’s job to highlight an oeuvre rather than compete with it?
Isn’t a curator’s job to highlight an oeuvre rather than compete with it?
Arbus will survive the slight. How could she not? The oeuvre is cloistered and complete; it’s sharp, stark, and discordant enough to withstand extra-aesthetic intrusions. That’s certainly the case with the Arbus most of us are familiar with: the unsentimental-bordering-on-cruel chronicler of pock-marked