Fine Arts
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Iris Love
Unforgettable
By: - Sep 11th, 2020The doorbell rang. I was in bed. It was about 9pm and I was a little hung-over from the birthday party I’d hosted the night before. Who could it be? Wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underwear, I opened the door just enough to see who it was. OMG. It was Iris Love, dressed in her full Scottish clan regalia of plaid tartan kilt, white shirt, knee socks, and jacket with kilt pins and clan badges.
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How George Seybolt Changed the MFA
Board President Initiated Business Concepts from 1968 to 1972
By: - Sep 11th, 2020George Crossan Seybolt (1915-1993) was president and chairman of the William Underwood Company, best known for its canned Deviled Ham. He was recruited to the board of trustees by the director, Perry T. Rathbone. When be became president of the board there was constant conflict. Seybolt mico managed the museum and ousted Rathbone over the Raphael incident. His personal appointment for director, Merrill Rueppel, proved to be a disaster. He was fired after a Globe exposé. Seybolt went on to be a museum lobbyist and visionary. It's what we discussed in 1977.
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Permafrost Melts at MASS MoCA
Blane De St. Croix: How to Move a Landscape.
By: - Sep 02nd, 2020The art of Blane De St. Croix comes at the viewer via a multivalent attack on the staggering challenges posed by irreparable climate change. The diversity of this artist’s media and its ecological content — driven by a political mandate — evokes the tradition of Social Sculpture by the postwar German artist Joseph Beuys. The MoCA project How to Move a Landscape draws on dramatically different approaches to convey the rapid erosion and melting of permafrost in the Arctic.
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Philippe David’s Happy Threads
Textile Designs Inspired by Nature
By: - Sep 02nd, 2020“I showed this fabric at an early stage of its existence to a professional in my industry. When he said, ‘you will never sell a yard of it,’ I knew I had a WINNER!” Textile designer Philippe David is referring to his bestselling creation – ever: “Bal d'Eté" (Summer Prom), a colorful and joyful silk fabric manufactured in India, the land of textile wonders.
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Without Gorky a Netflix Documentary
Film by the Artist's Granddaughter Cosima Spender
By: - Aug 27th, 2020The artist of Armenian heritage, Matin Mugar, reviewed "Without Gorky" in 2012. Cosima Spender filmed the tragic story of her grandfather the surrelist/abstract expressionist artist Arshile Gorky. He came to America as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide in which his mother died from starvation. Growing up in Watertown as a young artist he took the name Gorky and denied his heritage remaining distant with little contact to relatives. His wife Agnes, then in her late 80s, convyed memories of terrible suffering and its impact on their two daughters.; particularly coming to terms with his suicide. Gorky was among the greatest artists of his generation. This superb and compelling documentary is now featured on Netflix.
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What Joe Thompson Means to Northern Berkshire County
The Daunting Legacy of MASS MoCA
By: - Aug 22nd, 2020Joe Thompson graduated from Williams College in 1981. As founding director of MASS MoCA he has been here ever since. Stepping down in October he will sever ties next summer. Between now and then he will plan the next move. Other than some loose ends his remarkable work here is complete. Magnificently so.
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Joe Thompson's Letter to Members
Stepping Fown and Mass MoCA Director
By: - Aug 22nd, 2020With the decades long development of the MASS MoCA campus complete but for some loose ends director Joe Thompson is moving on. Since graduating from nearby Williams College, now in his early 60's it's the only job he's ever had. His work and MoCA development over the years has had enormous cultural and economic inpact on Northern Berkshire County.
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Kendall Messick’s "Blind Sight"
To See and to be Seen
By: - Aug 13th, 2020In October 2019, I was having dinner with my friend Kendall Messick, an artist who creates installations with still photography, film, video and ever-evolving two-and three-dimensional media. Over dinner he told me he was flying to Bogota, Colombia, the next day for a major installation of his work. The show is an achievement of both patience and memory. It was thirty-four years in the making.
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Eclipse Mill Artists, North Adams, Ma. 2020
Projects during COVID-19: Impromptu and Airborne Transmission
By: - Aug 11th, 2020Artists everywhere are communicating and presenting work virtually that was conceived and created or executed this year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Life and art had mostly moved from our physical to our virtual world. Artists at the Eclipse Mill have done the same. Here we present three projects, two 'real' and one online, just a slice of artistic work that's being created in 40 studios. 'IMPROMPTU' has become a virtual exhibition on August 15 and 'Airborne Transmission' has been installed as described below.
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Shaker Museum to Create Facility in Chatham, NY
Selldorf Architects to Design $15 Million Project
By: - Aug 03rd, 2020Housing its comprehensive collection of Shaker material, the new museum facility will embody Shaker values of inclusion, innovation and equality. $15 Million project is expected to break ground in 2021 and be completed in 2023.
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Fred Plotkin: Renaissance Man
Renowned Expert on Italian food and Opera
By: - Jul 23rd, 2020Fred Plotkin notes: “I am not a singer or musician, yet my working life has a lot of similarities in that most of my income is derived from appearing in front of audiences in places of public assembly. People buy tickets to what I do so, of course, that means that all of my contracts, all of my speaking engagements, have been canceled until November.”
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North Adams Artist and Activist Phil Sellers
With Gail They Ran River Hill Pottery
By: - Jul 23rd, 2020This week we lost a neighbor and friend the artist/ activist Phil Sellers. He grew up in Ohio where he and his wife Gail Kolis Sellers launched a pottery business. They moved to North Adams to be with her family. Together they ran River Hill Pottery in the Eclipse Mill. The Sellers were involved in many arts and politcal activities. That entailed organizing artists to help oust long term mayor John Barrett,III. They became close friends with mayor Dick Alcombright who helped with their many public art projects.
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Virtual Summer Camp
New Work by NAGA Artists
By: - Jul 20th, 2020We have decided to put together a virtual group show that will run through August 29th. We wanted to show you what our artists are making right now and keep beautiful things in front of you until we (hopefully) come back for in-person exhibitions in the fall.
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Photographer Joseph Podlesnik
About Provisional Painting
By: - Jul 11th, 2020In photography and painting perspective has often been the main visual tool that connects the human presence to the here and now which becomes place. The image created by the handheld camera establishes ipso facto a tight bond via the picture plane on the back of the camera to the environment. If it is parallel to the subject matter or at an angle to it, the way the eye is moved by the image can be quite different.
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Lincoln's Clark Gallery
Regrouping
By: - Jul 08th, 2020Observing social distancing the Clark Gallery in Lincoln, Mass is Regrouping. A selection of gallery artists is on view. To visit the gallery please call ahead for an appointment.
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Northeastern University Restricts Access to AAMARP
African American Master Artists in Residency Program Founded in 1978
By: - Jul 06th, 2020During the pandemic Northeastern University has restricted access to artists in its historic African American Master Artists in Residency Program. It was founded in 1978 by Dana C. Chandler, Jr. Speaking out against the university for its actions against AAMRP is Dana Chandler III the son of the founder,
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Alice Sachs Zimet The Collector
Follow Heart and Eyes, but not Your Ears
By: - Jul 05th, 2020In December of 1984 Alice Sachs Zimet attended an exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York. She had come with Sam Wagstaff, the lover of Robert Mapplethorpe. They were there to see a flower photography exhibition from Wagstaff’s vast and groundbreaking collection.That’s where Zimet saw an image by contemporary photographer Andrew Bush titled Columbines. It was love at first sight.
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Alice Sachs Zimet The Collector
Follow Your Heart and Eyes, but not Your Ears
By: - Jul 02nd, 2020In December of 1984 Alice Sachs Zimet attended an exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York. She had come with Sam Wagstaff, the lover of Robert Mapplethorpe. They were there to see a flower photography exhibition from Wagstaff’s vast and groundbreaking collection.That’s where Zimet saw an image by contemporary photographer Andrew Bush titled Columbines. It was love at first sight.
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Was Malcolm Rogers the MFA's Greatest Director
By Far Its Most Controvesial
By: - Jul 01st, 2020When the British born Malcolm Rogers took over the Museum of Fine Arts in 1994 it had a $4.5 million annual deficit and was generally moribund. It was better than he found it when he departed in 2015. He left a bricks and mortar legacy of The American Wing designed by Lord Norman Foster. Under a mantra of One Museum, however, he dismantled the traditional departments, fired renowned curators, or forced them to leave. He created a structure of mega departments staffed by cooperative curators. The current director, Matthew Teitelbaum, inherited a debt of $140 million and is tasked with mending curatorial fences.
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Daniel Chester French and Minute Man's Model
All in the Family
By: - Jun 25th, 2020Isaac Davis, Captain of the Acton troops was the model for the Minute Man. He was the first officer killed on April 19, 1775. The statute is placed on the ground on which he died.
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Chesterwood to Open Soon
Berkshire Home of Daniel Chester French
By: - Jun 25th, 2020Chesterwood, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation since 1969, was the former summer home, studio and gardens of Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), one of America’s foremost 20th century public sculptors. Although French is best known for his statues of the Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts and the seated figure of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., he also had a passion and talent for garden and landscape design.
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Theodore E. Stebbins of the MFA
Former Curator of American Painting
By: - Jun 22nd, 2020MFA director Jan Fontein first apppointed John Walsh as curator of European Paintings then Theodore E. Stebbins as curator of American Paintings. In this first of our two part coverage Stebbins discusses the M&M Karolik and William H. and Saundra Lane collections. On his watch Stebbins acquired major American, modern and contemporary works. His legacy for the museum and in the field is formidable.
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Theodore E. Stebbins MFA Two
Pollock's Troubled Queen Among Many Acquisitions
By: - Jun 20th, 2020When John Walsh left for the Getty Museum, and with a hiatus in the contemporary department, Theodore E. Stebbins, chaired three departments. He seized the opportunity to acquire American and European modern and contemporary art. There were huge gaps to fill when works that now command millions were relatively affordable.
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Alan Shestack Two
In 1992 the MFA Had an Annual Deficit of $3 Million
By: - Jun 15th, 2020When I interviewed Alan Shestack in 1992 he had been MFA director for five years. It was a time of economic downturn and the museum faced an annual deficit of $3 million. We discussed ways in which the museum might meet this challenge including a relationship with a museum in Nagoya, Japan which it helped to launch and program. He spoke adamantly that selling works to cover costs violated the mission and covenant of museums and their donors.
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Joseph Nechvatal’s Art Springs From Algorithms
Viral Venture Online at White Page Gallery
By: - Jun 15th, 2020Long before we had heard of, or even imagined, viruses like Covid-19, Post-Minimal painter, multi-media artist and art theoretician Joseph Nechvatal was generating them. Not the contagious types, but computer-robotic assisted ones.
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