Front Page

For the past decade Edmund Barry Gaither has been primarily focused on developing a mixed use parcel in Roxbury which will include a new home for the National Center for African American Artists. That has entailed suspending his projects as an adjunct curator to the Museum of Fine ares and maintaining NCAAA as a skeletal operation in a 19th century former mansion in Roxbury. Despite many setbacks he hopes to get the museum up and running in the next couple of years. This is the second and final part of a dialogue with Gaither..
2

As a part of our research and oral history of modern and contemporary art and culture, some time ago, I contacted Kenworth Moffett. At the end of the tenure of Perry T. Rathbone as director of the Museum of Fine Arts, in 1971, a department of contemporary art was created with Moffett as its founding curator. He asked me to send him some questions and this essay is the result of that correspondence. During the years when he was director of the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art we always enjoyed an annual lunch when vacationing in nearby Palm Beach.
7

Soho Rep inaugurated An Octoroon in 2013 and it won over critics and audiences as well as winning two Obies. Now it is reprised at the Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn. Committed to updating historic pieces for present day audiences at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, this play hits its mark.

While a graduate student at Brown University, in 1970, the art historian Edmund Barry Gaither was recruited for a shared appointment as adjunct curator of the Museum of Fine Arts and working with Elma Lewis as director of the National Center for African American Artists. He still holds those positions. In this first part of an extensive interview Gaither describes jumping in to curate the major MFA exhibition African American Artists from New York and Boston. He was soon multi- tasking while being pressured by a diverse range of individuals and groups.
1

Woodie King Jr. was an usher in the Cherry Lane Theatre when the then Leroi Jones' Dutchman was first produced. Sets for the second one acter, The Toilet, were designed by Larry Rivers, and everyone went to a warehouse to claim them when Rivers made a name for himself. Estimated to be worth $1,000,000, they have never been found. But the play Dutchman lives. King makes very clear its connection to the Wagner opera, as the overture and excerpts are played as prelude. Incidents in Ferguson and New York keep the issue of racial violence very present.

I have curated a show of painting at the Kimball Jenkins School of Art 266 Main St in Concord,NH(right off I 93). It includes Susan Carr, Martin Mugar, Addison Parks, Paul Pollaro and Jason Travers. It will be up for the Months of March and April.The opening reception is 5-7 on Friday March 14th.

Calling Kirsten Flagstad the voice of the century is an understatement. The Norwegian soprano had a voice for the ages. Even in rachtety recordings of her performances, the big, beautiful clean sound is revealed. In a monodrama developed and directed by Einer Bjorge, a deeper picture of the famed singer is revealed by actress Nina Bendiksen.

The Old Globe production of “The Twenty-seventh Man” written by novelist and first-time playwright Nathan Englander, has the very good fortune to be directed by Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein. Edelstein’s easy manner belies the intellectual rigor he applies to all of the productions he directs.

Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s latest play “The Night Alive”, is having its West Coast Premiere at The Geffen Playhouse, directed by Randall Arney. McPherson is famed for infusing elements of the supernatural and its subject matter into his plays. In his award-winning 2008 play “The Seafarer”, a poker game becomes the allegorical battleground of a Faustian bargain between the protagonist and the devilishly clever antagonist.

Brahms' German Requiem is closer to tone poem than the dramatic opera of Verid's Requiem. In the hands of Danniele Gatti, off book on a very complicated score, the Requiem moved and mesmerized. Soloists and choir were reverently perfect. The sound lofted into Carnegie Hall, and, as Brahms wrote, how lovely is that dwelling place.

Sherlock Holmes is a perennial favorite at the Indiana Repertory Theatre. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the latest in a line of successful adaptations of the infamous detective to hit their stage. This production runs through March 15.

Lissa Brennan’s new play For the Tree to Drop builds an existentialist drama that explores the webs of power in which antebellum slaves (and their owners) were caught.The play is being presented at PICT Classic Theatre in Pittsburgh.

My Irish mom loved corned beef and cabbage. Dad, a Sicilian, enjoyed more exotic cuisine. He insisted that we eat whatever was put in front of us. One night we went too far.
1

Among other insights our science correspondent reveals that "Forty and fifty years ago, Iodine, in the form of Sodium Iodate, was routinely added to American bakery products, both as a dough conditioner and a nutritional supplement. Then, of course because it was cheaper, Big Food started adding Bromates instead. These not only contain no Iodine, but are also capable of displacing it. Our FDA likes to say that all the Bromates (which are banned in the EU and UK) in dough will become the less-toxic Bromides in the processes of flour “ripening,” rising, and baking.'" It is likely that you didn't know that.

From the author of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Intimate Apparel is a superb evocative portrait of Esther, an independent but lonely African American seamstress in early 20th-century New York. She earns her living sewing exquisite lingerie for wealthy white socialites uptown and whores downtown. After receiving a letter from a stranger who is laboring on the Panama Canal, she begins a long-distance courtship with him. Of course, he is not all that he initially seems. Disillusioned but unbroken, Esther reluctantly returns to her sewing to refashion her dreams. This is a wonderful Lyric Stage Company production.

The play is called 5 Times in One Night and imagine what you will. But you won't guess until you watch, so don't read this review. It is a spoiler. Yet in the hands of director RJ Tolan and actors Dylan Dawson and Darcy Fowler, a rare balance between a non-invasive peak into intimate moments and non-porno sexuality is beautifully mounted.

A short poem formed itself in my mind just a few days ago as I was opening my eyes. I had seen the mirage or 'Fatamorgana' a few times already, experiencing a grey and moving image, before the real and colorful photograph on the opposite wall in our bedroom took shape. I dismissed the earlier experiences and this time, the words were practically there! - Then, I translated it into German.

The protest artist Dana C. Chandler, Jr. was an activist who charged the Museum of Fine Arts with institutional racism. That initiated the special exhibition African American Artists from New York and Boston and the appointment of its curator, Edmund Gaither, as an adjunct curator of the MFA. Chandler was later instrumental in forming African American Master Artist-In-Residence Program for Northeastern University. This is the first of a two part interview with the artist.
2

Di Donato's opera performances are perfection. One day I rushed down to the AMC near Navy Pier in Chicago, because a friend had called to tell me about di Donato's last Cinderella. An encore HD performance was all I could catch, but it was sublime. What we have come to think of as a di Donato performance is perfection. Now I might be able to see perfection in action. I did.

In 1973 the studio of Dana C. Chandler, Jr. was looted with most of his work destroyed. The studio was then torched. He was assisted by a dean of Northeastern to find adequate space. That led to establishing the African American Master Artist-in-Residence Program (AAMARP). It continues to exist although Chandler relocated to New Mexico where he has lived for the past decade.
1

On view from March 31 to August 30, 2015, Ralph Pucci: The Art of the Mannequin is the first museum exhibition to explore the work of renowned New York-based designer Ralph Pucci, widely regarded for his innovative approach to the familiar form of the mannequin. The Museum of Arts and Design is located at Columbus Circle in New York City.

European paternosters are one thing. The elevators of the Old Elbtunnel in Hamburg are quite another! They are still the principal contraptions that transport cars, bicycles and pedestrians after 100 years in action up and down on the St. Pauli side. Then, through the tunnels below the Elbe River all passengers reappear on one or the other side at the Port of Hamburg.
2

My feisty pal Jonas Dovydenas in an exchange of emails declared a fatwa against writing poems about elevators. That launched a tsunami of literary invention,. Even Jonas relented and joined in the fun. From December 16 through January 26 some 32 poems were posted by 25 poets. Now we ask you the readers to vote for the winners of this lively contest. This will result in a Readers Prize. The contest will also be juried for an Official Prize by Professor Mark Miller and his students at MCLA. Let the games begin.
13

Some years ago we bonded while touring Spain. On the bus Ric Haynes and I discussed the art and culture we experienced. There was another such adventure in Italy. This latest of many dialogues explores the soul and resources of his oeuvre. The new work will be shown at the alternative HallSpace in Boston. The exhibition Where Am I will be on view from March 21 to April 25.

The ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance’s CenterSeries presents Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Anne Bogart’s SITI Company as they join forces for A Rite. These two celebrated companies examine The Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky’s groundbreaking masterpiece. There will be one performance only, on Tuesday, March 17th, 2015 at 8:00 PM on the ’62 Center’s MainStage.