Connoisseurs & Academies

Photographic venture into the grand architectural settings of museums, stately homes, and academies

Karen Knorr's photographic series Connoisseurs & Academies induce a kaleidoscope of memories: Photographed between 1986 and 2005 with an analog camera, her images let us venture into the intricate world of the history of museums and stately homes, of objects, paintings, connoisseurship, and the structures of academies. The use of animals as an allegorical motif is today embedded in Knorr's practice, but they first appear in Connoisseurs, where a chimpanzee becomes the Genius of the Place. Karen Knorr's (b. 1954) works are in the collections of the Tate and Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, SFMOMA, San Francisco, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) in Bangalore, among others.