Even with her decades of accomplishments — music, print, and photography — Patti Smith is not pretentious. On Thursday afternoon when she arrived for a brief talk with the media, there was no entourage, no wall. Instead, she was profusely apologetic about how little time she was able to spend talking, as she was needed for soundcheck.

Wishing a “Happy Rimbaud’s Birthday” to everyone, she breezed through the installation, Une Saison en Enfer (AKA “The Rimbaud Room”), providing background about the litters, which were modeled after  a sketch Rimbaud did of his own. Smith said Rimbaud was “carried down a mountain” on a litter when he had gangrene. The large litter has inscriptions of Rimbaud’s last words, something not obvious upon first glance.

When asked about a display case containing books and other Rimbaud-related artifacts, Smith said some of it is “just really for fun,” and possibly disappointed others by explaining that one of the books on display was not the one she wrote about stealing in Just Kids.

They are “a magical thing,” Smith said of beds, the subject of several of her photographs. She explained that we spend so much of our lives in beds and they have an array of uses, including sleeping, conception, “making love,” working, dying, and, “watching Law & Order.” More interested in photographing others’ beds than her own, she added that her bed “is so littered with crap,” like books and a cat.

Artists’ beds are only one of “the tools of artists,” as she calls them, that she captured with her Land 250 Polaroid camera. Other items include silverware, a cup, a chair, paintbrushes, and slippers belonging to Robert Mapplethorpe and Pope Benedict XV.

These artifacts and artworks feel too intimate to view in the presence of others.

A litter in Une Saison en Enfer

Director and CEO of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Susan L. Talbott, who also curated this exhibit, explained that in Italian, camera solo translates to “a private room,” or “a room of one’s own.” Besides the Woolf connection — there are two photos of her bed and one of her cane — Patti Smith: Camera Solo truly feels like a journey into someone’s sacred space. This space pays tribute to artists, but in a time when honoring artists rarely happens anymore. There are layers of beautiful anachronisms in here: “Herman Hesse’s Typewriter” is one. Taking photographs with a camera that requires its film be purchased on eBay is another. The display case labels were handwritten by Smith on Rolodex cards. The work is authentic and intimate in ways that contemporary art often is not.

Some of the seventy black-and-white photographs focus on symbols and icons — Wiener Riesenrad, St. Sebastian, and the Eiffel Tower — rather than artists’ tools.  Still, there is almost a talismanic quality to them.

The exhibit also includes Equation Daumal, a film directed by Patti Smith.

Patti Smith: Camera Solo will be on display through February 19, 2012.