Galleries to see high-quality large optical prints in the US?

I think it was the second North American distributor which dropped the ball, Bob. Their warehouse practices were awful - stock not rotated, damaged boxes, stock outages, general incompetence. Of course, one might blame Ilford too for not taking the complaints seriously enough. The actual manufacture was Swiss all along, same as back under the Ciba-Geigy label; none of that was their fault - the problem was at the marketing and distribution end under Ilford - the "brown shoe"guys.

Well all I'll say is...

There was a time when I thought slide film was dead, but then came Ektachrome. There was a time when I thought new scanners were extremely unlikely, but we have multiple lab grade scanners hitting the marketing in the next year. There was a time when I thought processing equipment would be relying solely on old stock that we maintain, but now we have Colenta among a few others. Nobody was supposed to be willing to do the R&D to make new color negative film, but now we have Lucky and Harman going for it. There was a time when new film cameras were a fantasy, but I have a new Pentax 17, Rollei 35AF sitting on my desk. Lomo seems to be making a very attractive new P&S with manual override now. The list goes on... Who would have said we could still buy new 8x10 instant film materials in 2025 from a company that technically isn't even really Polaroid?

Maybe 'Cibachrome' in the way it existed back then is dead, but I'm guessing someone could formulate a new direct positive color material. It would be sad to not have that incredible glossy look and permanence of course. But I'm not a chemist, maybe someone can figure it out.