The photography of Diane Arbus always draws crowds, and a new show of her works entitled In the Park at Lévy Gorvy gallery on Madison Avenue (until 24 June) is no exception. Arbus took all of the images in Central Park and Washington Square Park, capturing the “hard core lesbians” and “winos”, as she described them, who roamed Manhattan’s green spaces in the 1960s. The photographer Neil Selkirk—the only person authorised to make posthumous prints of her work—provided plenty of pithy insights at the private exhibition view into why Arbus was so special. He pointed out that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired three works by Arbus in early 1969, but asked later that year if they could only take two, as they were short of the $75 required. (This fascinating faux-pas is detailed in the 2011 publication Diane Arbus: A Chronology.) Last year, the Met Breuer gave Arbus her dues by mounting a 100-strong show on her early work.
