After I had finished assessing the Miró, I headed on down to the 3rd floor to check out
The Printed Picture. What a truly wonderful surprise of an exhibit this turned out to be.
It's sort of laid out academically, with each room of the exhibit highlighting a particular printing and/or photographic process. There are no "Masterpieces" on display, however, the curator has managed to turn some everyday objects, prints, images and photographs into prime examples of their various processes and technology. Towards the end of the sequence of rooms and examples, I thought I had inadvertently turned around since it seemed like things were starting to go backwards, but then I realized that the examples mounted on the gallery walls were from the very recent past - including a copy of the front page of today's(!) New York Times. However, the examples from "today" were very much a result of "yesterday". It truly brought the whole exhibit full-circle by demonstrating how the printing and reproduction processes of today are more closely related to how images were first reproduced many(!) years ago, closer than one would think. I guess a less-convoluted way to put it would be as follows: Woodblock prints and engravings were the first attempts at photography, long before the term "photograph" was even coined.
