As a former Art History major in undergrad, I made it my mission to visit all the art museums in the city when I moved here. This week, I decided to make a return trip to Fotografiska, mainly because I love the museum and hadn’t seen the current exhibitions. I was there on a Tuesday around 1pm.

Upon arriving, you walk into a spacious lobby where the staff greets you and checks you in. On the left side is the cafe that was full of people on laptops and taking meetings. On the right is an extensive gift shop. I’ve never found it overwhelming, but it would not surprise me if other people did. One of my favorite aspects of the museum is the fact that you can take drinks with you into the galleries, so I grabbed a coffee to take upstairs with me.

It may be my ease of being in art institutions but I tend to make friends more easily in them. Fotografiska’s laid back environment and quieter galleries also help. I meet one woman in the elevator - she was confused as to why it would not take her to 2 (they send you all the way up to the top floor and you work your way down). We ended up walking the top two floors together, but then she had to speed off. She was new to NYC and it was her first visit to Fotografiska - she had just moved to the neighborhood.

I had a couple of other short conversations with the others around me in the museum, including with some kids who looked like they were high schoolers (I guess they were on April break) complaining that the one picture of Drake in the hip hop exhibit was tucked back in a corner. Most of the other conversations were with adults older than me who were making small talk about various photographs they found to be interesting. Most people were there alone or in pairs.

The two exhibits on view when I visited were Hip-Hop: Conscious, Unconscious and Elizaveta Porodina’s Un/Masked. I did not have much previous exposure to either sets of work, so I went in with a fresh mind and no expectations. Hip-Hop was spread out over three entire floors, creating space for a listening room on the 6th floor where they were screening videos of hip-hop history, photographic history of hip-hop on the 5th floor, and highlighting regional differences from around the US on the 4th. My biggest complaint was the lighting was solely rigged for lighting the photographs and many of the objects were cast in shadows and their wall labels very hard to read. Porodina’s exhibit took the 3rd floor and each gallery focused on a different collection pulled from her entire body of work.

Photos, videos, and a 3d scan of one of Porodina’s galleries are below:

**https://scaniverse.com/scan/ky2aazggct4ytnvz**