SCENES FROM MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM IN B&W (ALMOST)

Earlier this month I took advantage of Milwaukee Art Museum's free admission day to grab some more photos of this iconic venue.  Usually, on my visits to the museum I find myself taking copious photos of the Calatrava addition, both inside and out, and then spend time photographing selected artwork, most of which doesn't make it past the "cutting room floor."  On this occasion, I really didn't spend that much time with the artwork.  This time, too, I found myself converting most of what I kept into B&Ws.

First, there was some sort of banquet to be held in the Quadracci pavilion that evening and I took a couple of shots of the setup.

What caught my eye in the first shot were the stacks of chairs, and I tried to photograph them in a balanced fashion.  In the second what caught my eye were the long central table and the lines of perspective that it was creating.  Everything was in white or near-white and so the decision to convert to B&W was an easy one.

I also took the (almost obligatory) shot of the glass-paneled ceiling in the pavilion, as an abstract.

I did keep a couple of shots of artwork.  The first is a very stylized menorah.  I was not able to position myself directly in front of the piece, but I did like the shadows that the candlesticks were projecting on the wall behind the menorah.

The following piece, made of an intentionally sagging piece of fabric, was not very inspiring, but I did like the tableau created by a group of patrons who had chosen to sit on the bench in front of the artwork.

Finally, are a couple of shots of the exterior of the Calatrava.

I didn't convert this last shot to a B&W because I liked the colors of the sky on this cloudless evening.

There is a story behind why I cropped this shot to include only just over half of the addition's elevated brise soleil.  The original shot was symmetrical, including both sides of the brise soleil.  However, the sun had not yet set and there were hit and miss spots of direct sunlight on the left side of the structure.  I cropped out that side to eliminate that distraction.  I actually like the crop.  At least it isn't the stereotypical symmetrical shot, and who wouldn't be able to figure out what the other side looks like, anyway.

John