February 8, 2010
Matthew Monteith in Rome
From September 2008 to August 2009, Matthew Monteith was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. The Academy awards one-year fellowships to four visual artists each year and recently, they created the Abigail Cohen Rome Prize in photography, specifically enabling one photographer to live at the academy while working on a project. Monteith was interested in investigating how different institutions shape the way people look at art. While in Rome, he chose to make a series of images dealing with the odd disconnect of viewing art in a hermetic environment.
With the question, “What does it mean to view art, to be educated, to be able to see the world?” in mind, Monteith followed art students, designers, scholars, tourists, and others around Rome. He visited gardens, museums, public spaces, and churches. “I was trying to describe a viewer’s paradise,” says Monteith. “This place of looking and spending time truly considering something, which is often lost in the rush of contemporary society.”
In Monteith’s photos, the viewer observes the beholder as they take in the actual object. “We study many things in abstraction. You can read forever about Bernini and how he sculpts marble, but until you actually sit there and spend a considerable amount of time with the work itself, you don’t really grasp it,” explains Monteith.
Learn more about Matthew Monteith’s time in Rome
