Fine Arts
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Berkshire Museum Dumps the Fine Arts
Selling Two Paintings by Norman Rockwell and 38 Other Works
By: - Jul 21st, 2017When the Berkshire Museum announced plans to focus on science and history there was initial euphoria. To reach a goal of $60 millon, $20 for renoivation, and $40 million for endowment it will sell 40 works of art including two paintings by Norman Rockwell which the artist gave to the museum and his Berkshire neighbors. In so doing it violates deaccession restrictions for art museums. In a shuffle Van Shields, the director of BM, has stated that he does not run an art musuem and is not bound by ethical guidelines. That may change as coverage evolves from local to national news.
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Rembrandt at the Frick
The Artist's Divine Encounter
By: - Jul 08th, 2017It’s often said that in some museums you go from a masterpiece to something less in a step. The Frick, mainly the inspiration of the daughter of the steel magnate from Pittsburgh who dueled with Andrew Carnegie, each work that hangs on the walls of the Frick home in New York is perfection.
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DeYoung Museum Celebrates Summer of Love
Special Exhibition Has Flowers in Its Hair
By: - Jul 06th, 2017The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll is celebrated at the De Young Museum in San Francisco through August 20. Fifty years ago kids from all over the nation flocked to Haight Ashberry with flowers in their hair. This amazing exhibition displays the artifacts of that phenomenon.
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Takashi Murakami's Pop Kitsch in Chicago
Enormous Exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art
By: - Jun 08th, 2017Takashi Murakami is best known for his work related to Japanese anime and manga, as well as his sweeps into commercial and pop art and collaborations with artists such as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. During last week’s press preview, he was articulate in discussing his work and his inspirations with curator Michael Darling (although the artist occasionally needed help from his translator).
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Jane Hudson Exhibition in Williamstown
Exploring Modernism and Updating Abstraction
By: - Jun 07th, 2017Jane Hudson is known to the Berkshire arts community as the other half of the rock duo, Jeff and Jane, as well as for tending shop at various incarnations of Hudson's Antiques. On Sunday, June 17 from 3:30 to 5:30 PM., an exhibition of her abstract works on paper will open at Hudson Art, 112 Water Street in Williamstown.
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Clark Features Summer Double Header
Tandem Exhibitions of Picasso and Alma-Tadema
By: - Jun 03rd, 2017This summer the Clark Art Institute features four special exhibitions Picasso Encounters, an exhibition of prints with a few key paintings, as well as Orchestrating Elegance; Alma Tadema and the Marquand Music Room and two focused on prints and paintings by Helen Frankenthaler. The museum launched its expansion with a spate of blockbusters but is now moving into a new era with less hoopla under its reserved and scholarly French-born director Olivier Meslay.
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Centerbeam of CAVS/MIT Reintroduced at ZKM
40 Years Post documenta 6 at Kassel, Germany
By: - Jun 03rd, 2017The exhibition: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of 'Centerbeam,' A Performative Sculpture by CAVS, can be seen at ZKM, Karlsruhe/Germany, until October 1st. The museum is also presenting in an adjacent gallery Aldo Tambellini’s, 'Black Matters.' He was one of the 21 artists, who participated in the spectacular, collaborative and participatory outdoor sculpture.
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Reconstructions by Sarah Fagan
Eclipse Mill Gallery Exhibition Through June 24
By: - May 30th, 2017The exhibition Reconstructions by Sarah Fagan at the Eclipse Mill Gallery through June 24 combines abstract works on paper and modular geometric objects. The artist created the works over several months while focused on applying to graduate school. She will enroll this fall in the MFA program at the University of Texas in Austin.
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MASS MoCA Celebrates
32 Years from Thought to Finish
By: - May 29th, 2017It was a challenge to find a legal parking space anywhere near the museum in North Adams. On Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, from dawn to dusk, there were long lines and a constant stream of visitors. There may have been some 6,000 during the day and another 10,000 attended the rock concert by Cake on MASS MoCA's Joe Thompson Field.
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Nick Cave at MASS MoCA
Sound Suits on Parade
By: - May 29th, 2017As part of the dawn to dusk celebration of the launch of Building Six of MASS MoCA there was a titubating parade of the Sound Suits of the artist Nick Cave. The event was choreographed by Williams College professor Sandra Burton. Cave was present for the occasion.
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Expanded MASS MoCA Galleries
Preview of May 28 Opening
By: - May 16th, 2017During a media tour of the final phase of build out for the 17 acre MASS MoCA campus artists, curators and installlers were working around the clock. While some of the works were not ready for prime time we caught an exciting glimpse of what visitors will encounter this summer in North Adams. The development of Building Six adds 130,000 square-feet of usable space. For renovations, programming and endowment the museum has raised $65 million.
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Matisse in the Studio at the MFA
Collectibles Demonstrate Master Artist's Theatricality
By: - May 13th, 2017Matisse’s collectibles had a profound influence on his creative choices. Allowing us a priceless opportunity to see how the artist’s mind worked and the ways his creative process unfolded, this magnetic exhibition at the MFA Boston allows us to examine them in relationship to his art. As its only North American venue, Matisse in the Studio will only visit Boston.
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Massive Rauschenberg Exhibition Headed to NY
Mulling Over Perls of Wisdom
By: - May 12th, 2017When visiting the Frank Stella retropective at the Whitney in 2015 the critic had his car towed. The event was so costly and inconvenient that Martin Mugar is thinking twice of driving to Manhattan to view the upcoming Rauschenberg exhibition. Many of his concerns and misgivings are informed by the critical comments of the critic Jed Perl. Here Mugar refects on Perls of wsdom. They enforce his own ideas of how Rauschenberg is emeblematic of the decline and fall of art in our time. As Mugar states "If you like your postmodern condition you can keep your postmodern condition and Rauschenberg's your guy."
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WOW at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mssachusetts
What a World of Wearable Art
By: - May 10th, 2017A recommendation for the Peabody Essex Museum to see particularly the special exhibition 'WOW' came in an understated manner, or I just did not pick up quickly enough what a delight the show would represent. We drove to Salem from Gloucester, where we were visiting, on a rainy and miserable afternoon and that made our day!
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Into the Woods with Artist Gabrielle Barzaghi
Hermit of Dogtown Previews Trident Gallery Exhibition
By: - May 09th, 2017Some years ago they built a home and studio on some 20 acres deep in the woods of Cape Ann's legendary Dogtown Common. They like the privacy and seclusion. During a recent week in Gloucester we met for an extensive studio visit and discussion of the upcoming June exhibition "Gabrielle Barzaghi: Perfect World" at Trident Gallery. Several drawings created in enraged response to outrageous statements by Donald Trump were included in The Body Politic a group exhibition and performance series at the gallrery.
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Muntadas: Projects/Proposals
At New York's Kent Gallery
By: - May 05th, 2017Muntadas’ original version of Emisión/Recepción was made in Madrid at a moment when Franco’s control over the media left Spain with but one TV station. All locations and all viewership was confined to the same exact broadcast at all times.
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Turner at the Frick
Britain's 19th Century Painter of Light
By: - May 02nd, 2017A beautifully presented exhibition built around works from The Frick Collection, Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages through Time, brings together 37 water colors, drawings, engravings, sketchbooks and oil paintings, from 1817 – 1845, a turning point in the artist’s career.
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Trident Gallery in Gloucester
Bringing Relevant Art Back to Cape Ann
By: - Apr 30th, 2017During the 19th Century and era of modernism Cape Ann was home to leading American artists. That faded in the post war era leaving a mostly tacky, conservative, artist colony. Several years ago Matthew Swift launched Trident Gallery as a matrix for Gloucester's best and brightest contemporary artists. While visiting we attended the closing party and special performances of the provocative exhibition The Political Body.
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Agita of the Artist Martin Mugar
Innocence and Experience
By: - Apr 26th, 2017For Blake, Christ was both a child and a lamb putting the innocence of the child and the lamb of the poem a priori in the realm of the godly. One cannot be a lamblike or a childlike without that innocence of God, which raises the question: what then is experience without innocence? Experience can only be a loss of innocence. Why do I in my painting linger in this realm of peachy keen colors if not to insist on the importance of this innocence that precedes experience.
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Free Sunday at Clark Art Institute
Last of the Off Season
By: - Apr 20th, 2017Celebrate spring in the Berkshires with the Clark Art Institute’s final First Sundays Free program of the season on Sunday, May 7 from 1–4 pm.
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MASS MoCA Season Starts May 28
Gallery and Performance Updates
By: - Apr 18th, 2017MASS MoCA launches into the summer season on May 28 with the opening of Building 6, the third phase of campus development, which encompasses more than 130,000 square feet of interior renovations to its 19th-century mill buildings.
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Ross Moffett from the Permanent Collection
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
By: - Apr 11th, 2017Ross Moffett (1888-1971) first came to Provincetown in 1913 to study with Charles Hawthorne. A year later a group of artists formed the Provincetown Art Association (later and Museum). In 1964 he published Art in Narrow Streets the first study of the art colony. Currently, the museum is exhibiting Ross Moffett from the Permanent Collection. It provides a rare opportunity to evaluate the work of a seminal Provincetown artist.
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Lester Johnson Works on Paper
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
By: - Apr 10th, 2017The sixteen works on paper that comprise the small but evocative exhibition Lester Johnson from the Permanent Collection provide rarely seen early works, starting in 1951. They provide examples of how the artist was looking at and deconstructing or abstracting seascapes, facades of houses, and breaking down the human figure. It is on view at the Provinctown Art Association and Museum through May 7.
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Biotope: Friends, Life Forms, Landscapes
Exhibition at Gallery 51 in North Adams
By: - Apr 04th, 2017In the show Biotope, at Gallery 51 in North Adams, the viewer is given the chance to experience life from the perspective of other life forms: animals, landscape, and vast fields denoting the pattern and apparent chaos in nature. Biotope refers to “habitat –an area within a biome where smaller subdivisions of species live,” suggesting a search for the “spirit of place” mentioned in the show’s introduction.
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Boston Art Dealer Alan Fink at 91
Art Was the Family Business
By: - Apr 04th, 2017Alan Fink met his artist wife, Barbara Swan, in Paris where he lived for three years on just $700. They married in 1952 and relocated to Boston. There he went to work for the next 16 years at Boris Mirski Gallery. In 1967 he founded Alpha Gallery now run by their daughter Joanna. Their son Aaron is an expressionist painter.
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