15 March 2005

If you're in New York before the end of May, be sure to check out Diane Arbus: Revelations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a truly dazzling retrospective of one of the most interesting artists to work in any medium over the past few decades. The accompanying catalog is a stunner, too. Back in college, I was fascinated enough by Arbus to read her biography and spend most of a summer planning a screenplay, never finished, that would have based most of a character on the young Arbus. (A few of you may also remember "Maddy," a story of mine that once appeared in the Advocate. The title character was a thinly-disguised amalgam of Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, and a girl I used to date.) Anyway, her photos still pack quite an emotional charge, at least for me, and they're worth seeing in person, especially if you're curious about where Kubrick found those creepy twin girls for The Shining.

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