Levy on Gopnik

Dr. David Levy, Director of the Corcoran, responds today in the WaPo to Blake Gopnik's interesting and provocative idea (from last week) that the Corcoran ought to establish a separate identity by focusing (no pun intended) on photography.

Blake here and Levy's response here.

I am curious what people think about Gopnik's idea. I think that it has some merit and I agree that Philip Brookman has done an extraordinary job as the Corcoran's photography curator. And Gopnik is right in the fact that there are some excellent photography collections, both public and private, in our area; why not have a museum for the genre?

From a commercial perspective it makes sense too; at least half of our shows for the last couple of years have been photography shows. In fact this year, we probably had more like 75% photography shows. Our sales have consistently been at least 50% photography.

Email me your thoughts and comments on this subject and I'll publish them here.