Owfice Burn and I thought we’d take a break from our daily routine of being foolish to head over to the Brooklyn Museum’s Annie Liebovitz exhibit. We believed that a little culture would help us overcome our ongoing severe cases of jack-ass-ness. We arrived at the museum, neatly dressed in our grown-up people clothes to blend in with the other museum visitors, and joined the long snaking lines to see Liebovitz’s legendary photos. Moments later, our mature museum demeanors were shattered when we passed a Ron Mueck sculpture of the man featured in the posted photo. C’mon! Owfice Burn and I were trying our best to be sophisticated viewers of art only to be visually accosted by an oversized sculpture of a creepy dude with a furry chest and a not-so-good haircut. I know, I know. Maybe he wasn’t just a furry dude but was instead the sculpted symbol of uncertainty, loneliness and vulnerability that pervades the human condition. I told this to Owfice Burn and she thought that sounded really smart.
Finally, we made it to the Liebovitz exhibit which features the jubilant, heart-wrenching or revealing images that are her signature. However, Owfice Burn and I were miffed that Susan Sontag, Liebovitz’s long-time partner, was described in the exhibit introduction as Liebovitz’s friend. What staff fool had a momentary lapse of 1980’s-sytle homophobia and labeled Liebovitz’s multi-decade partner as a “friend”? Anyway, the exhibit chronicles Liebovitz personal and professional photos from 1990-2005 including the illness and subsequent death of Sontag in 2005. If you haven’t seen it, we highly recommend it.
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