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Today at the Museum

May 21, 2013

Inspired by Books

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Audience 1 (Galleria Dell Accademia), Florenz

This image is presented as a "thumbnail" because it is protected by copyright. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts respects the rights of artists who retain the copyright to their work.

Title:Audience 1 (Galleria Dell Accademia), Florenz
Artist:Thomas Struth
Date:2004
Creation Place:Europe, Germany
Credit Line:Gift of funds from Wendy and Doug Dayton, Steve and Tamrah Schaller-O'Neil,...
Image Copyright:© 2004 Thomas Struth
Accession Number:2010.51.2
Thomas Struth was born in Geldern, Germany, near Düsseldorf, in 1954 and attended the Düsseldorf Academy from 1973-80, where he studied painting under the instruction of Gerhard Richter. For the last twenty years Thomas Struth has been photographing in the galleries of European and American museums, capturing viewers in the act of looking, often at recognizable works of art. More recently he has created images in which the art object is not visible and goes unidentified, as in the case of this image. A little museum sleuthing reveals that the audience here is taking in Michelangelo’s David, one of the world’s best-known sculptures. In every picture from his ongoing series “Museum Photographs,” Struth makes the viewers his—and consequently our—subject. In Audience, we look at how museum-goers, like us, respond to and perceive art in museums.