I attended the exhibition this weekend. The exhibition is large and very
well attended. They have done an excellent job of crowd control. The rooms
are not too crowed while they are clearly managing a high volume of traffic.


All in all I found it a disquieting experience. The elements of space and
time are fundamental to Monet's work. It is clear he tried to catch the
moment. There are excellent examples the same view taken at different times
of day. But the whole exhibition is laid out chronologically based on when
he (started?) each work. The problem is he didn't finish many of the works
for years. What is the correct point in time for a work started in 1900 and
finished in 1904? Where on the wall does it go? I strongly felt that the
works should have been grouped chronologically by room. For example showing
the effect WWI had on him. In other words all the works from 1914 until a
few years after the war. Within a room I would have like to have seen the
works grouped either showing the same time of day and different scenes or
(and this was done) the same scene at different times of day. But when the
took the same scene it was broken up in a funny way. For example there were
four views of the same building. The first two were separated from the
second two by two works by paintings that fell chronologically between them.
ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

Thanks for listening to me whine. I would appreciate some thoughtful
discourse however that would help me understand the logic that make a strict
chronological presentation a better choice than others? I was left with the
feeling the MFA was pandering. It expected to hype this work, get a bunch of
people to come who didn't really understand what they were seeing, and make
some money on the deal. If this is true then they blew a chance to educate
the masses but not the chance to make a bundle.