(Photo: Helen Levitt, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Today the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its renovated American Wing (First Lady Michelle Obama performed the ribbon-cutting honors) and tomorrow throws open the doors to its Francis Bacon retrospective, but should when you make it to the Met this summer, don't miss the selection of Helen Levitt photographs that have just gone on view in the the museum's Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery. The Met recently established an endowment fund and promised gift of artwork in memory of Levitt, the great American street photographer who died on March 29 at the age of 95. The fund, created through a planned gift of the artist's sister-in-law, will support the Met's acquisition of photographs by Levitt and other mid-20th-century American photographers working in her tradition. Twelve of Levitt's photographs have also been promised as a gift to the museum, which already has 43 in its collection (including "New York," the 1938 photo shown above).

Previously on UnBeige: