If you are going to be in the Big Apple over the summer, you owe it to yourself to see the Civil War art and photography exhibits at the Met Museum. You will literally see the war in a new way. The best way to see them, if possible, is to come on different days; these are separate, distinct exhibits and each has so much to see you will be exhausted when leaving the gallery. Intellectually, we all know the importance photography played in public consciousness and opinion, especially when the first photographs were displayed at the Brady studio in Manhattan shortly after Antietam. Emotionally, the Met does a good job of capturing that shock of the new. If you cannot make it, here is a piece CBS ran yesterday morning. Both shows run through Labor Day, September 2nd.