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Diane Arbus (1923?1971) is one of the most original and influential American artists of the 20th century. This retrospective exhibition, the first in more than 30 years, presents the artist’s signature images?such as Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1962 and A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y., 1970?as well as previously unpublished photographs and writings drawn from the artist’s archive.¹

The official site for the movie FUR, in theaters November 2006. Set in New York in the late 1950’s, FUR conjures an image of visonary artist Diane Arbus by intertwining a fictional romance with aspects of Arbus’ life in order to explore the mysterious artistic development of a woman who is now regarded as one of the most influential photographers of all time.²

Diane’s moneyed parents, David and Gertrude Nemerov (Harris Yulin and Jane Alexander), weren’t crazy about the match, but they’ve helped the couple by giving Allan advertising work for the tony department store David runs. The Nemerovs stage a fashion show in the Arbuses’ semi-modest (by rich people’s standards, anyway) Manhattan apartment, trying to entice fur buyers by showing svelte models dressed in the season’s most fashionable pelts.³

Sometime in the 1950s the photographer Diane Arbus discovered Hubert’s Museum, a Times Square freak show and flea circus housed in a venerable old building designed by McKim, Mead and White. Some of her greatest pictures were taken there or feature people who worked there: the Jewish giant; Andy Potato Chips, the Russian midget; Princess Sahloo, the snake charmer.⁴