Fine Arts
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Clyfford Still Unfolds in the Rockies
A Stand Alone Museum for Still Opens in Denver
By: - Nov 18th, 2011Ninety-four percent of Clyfford Still's output is now housed in a new museum in Denver. The hush hanging over his work has been broken and all the early excitement and praise he received from his peers and critics is proven correct in the paintings exhibited in this extraordinary viewing space.
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Rembrandt and Degas: Two Young Artists
Clark Art Institute to February 5
By: - Nov 13th, 2011The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown is fighting off a double Dutch dilemma (pun intended) with a miniscule but riveting special exhibition Rembrandt and Degas: Two Young Artists. It is now off season in the Berkshires and the museum is 90% closed for renovation and construction through summer 2014. But it gamely remains open with free admission, terrific small exhibitions, and the enormously popular Met Live in HD broadcasts.
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Under the Big Top: Festival of Trees 2011
Berkshire Museum Nov. 18- Jan. 2
By: - Nov 11th, 2011Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, for Under the Big Top: Festival of Trees 2011 at Berkshire Museum. The 27th annual holiday event, featuring more than one hundred dazzling, decorated trees filling the Museum’s galleries, begins with a gala Opening Night Party on Friday, November 18, 2011, and runs through Monday, January 2, 2012. Special exhibitions of vintage circus memorabilia and photography add to the exciting Big Top atmosphere. Bring the whole family to the most thrilling Festival of Trees ever!
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Eclipse Mill Gallery Annual
North Adams Exhibition Extended to December 3
By: - Nov 08th, 2011The popular Eclipse Gallery Annual, featuring work by residents of the Eclipse Mill in North Adams, Mass. has been refreshed and extended until Saturday, December 3. Because of prior commitment of some artists the overview has been refreshed with new works inviting a second look at this lively annual exhibition.
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Margaret Stein, Berkshire Artist
Two Retrospectives of Her Work
By: - Nov 08th, 2011Stein painted her way through life. She taught for decades at the Greenfield Community College where she ran one of the most important small print making departments in the country. Now her daughter Jenny offers up her work for view.
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Dream and Reality at Istanbul Modern
A Celebration of Woman Artists of Turkey
By: - Oct 31st, 2011Via an impressive historical overview of Turkish woman artists, the exhibition highlights the changes from empire to republic to today's vibrant contemporary art scene in Turkey. Curated by Levent Çalιkoglu of Istanbul Modern, feminist academic and activist Fatmagül Berktay, and art historians Zeynep Ãnankur and Burcu Pelvanoglu, the exhibition takes its title from the 1891 novel, Dream and Reality, coauthored by Fatma Aliye Topuz, the first female Turkish novelist, and Ahmet Mithat, a male journalist. The show runs to January 22, 2012.
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Istanbul Biennial
An Outstanding 12th Edition
By: - Oct 24th, 2011Istanbul is up there with Venice and Sao Paulo among the art biennials that matter. The 2011 edition explores the relationship between art and politics. Aesthetically pleasing, it is a sophisticated, rewarding show, which runs to November 13.
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Pennie Brantley at National Association of Women Artists
NY Exhibition on View Through October 27
By: - Oct 20th, 2011The work of the realist painter Pennie Brantley is readily familiar from participation in Boston and Berkshire based exhibitions. She is currently the focus of a one woman exhibition at the venerable National Association of Women Artists. This stunning show remains on view through October 27.
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The Art Salon in Central Mass
An Interview with Pat Bock
By: - Oct 20th, 2011When I sat down with Pat a week ago, ostensibly to discuss her Eagle Hill 2011-2012 Art Teas schedule, I had little idea how wide a spectrum of ideas we would end up exchanging. Here in a somewhat distilled form is the essence of our conversation.
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Van Gogh's Death Suicide or Murder
Gregory White Smith & Steven Naifeh's Gogh: His Life
By: - Oct 19th, 2011The 1991 Pulitzer Price winner Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh argue a new theory regarding Van Gogh death in their recently published book Van Gogh: His Life. According to the two authors the world most famous painter would not have committed suicide but would have been murdered. This is an intriguing hypothesis worth contemplating but cannot be proven.
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Big, Bold, and Undeniably Ambitious
Jonathan Prince at the Sculpture Garden in New York City
By: - Oct 18th, 2011At first glance, Prince’s monumental sculptures appear to be nothing more than simple geometric forms, a square with a broken edge, a column with its top gouged, and couple of circular sculptural riffs, one resembling a large distressed pill set on edge, the other a partially eaten donut doing a clever balancing act. On closer examination the lively simple shaped quartet begins to take on an otherworldly, if not quasi-religious cast.
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Ellsworth Kelly at the MFA
Museum School Alumnus Shows Wood Sculptures
By: - Sep 30th, 2011The first special exhibition in the newly renovated Linde Family Wing of Contempoary Art is a survey of wood sculptures by Ellsworth Kelly. With this project the MFA honors one of the most distinguished among the alumni of its Museum School. During the opening Kelly spoke with the media about studying with Boston Expressionist Karl Zerbe.
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Contemporary Art in Boston
Smoke and Mirrors at the MFA
By: - Sep 23rd, 2011On the occasion of the opening of the Linde Family Wing of Contemporary Art we reflect on a troubling history. There has been a struggle going back to the 1930s and the founding of the Institute of Contemporary Art. There has been an awkward relationship between the ICA, MFA and other museums in the area. It is now time for art workers to unite and throw off their chains.
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MFA Goes Contemporary
New Linde Wing Abounds in Surprises, Satisfactions
By: - Sep 19th, 2011Many scoffed that the MFA didn't have any contemporary art. The new installation of the collection proves that the old dame has more than Morris Louis. Bostonians are among the best-educated and most sophisticated people in America and they don’t need to be treated as if they are grade school children when it comes to contemporary art.
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Paul Ha Named Director of List Visual Arts Center
MIT's Contemporary Art Museum Has New Leadership
By: - Sep 12th, 2011Paul Ha, the current director of the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, has been selected as the new director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) List Visual Arts Center. Mr. Ha is expected to begin his new position Dec. 1.
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Prince Ankhaf a Coveted Treasure of the Museum of Fine Arts
Grandstanding Mohamed Saleh Demands Its Return to Egypt
By: - Aug 14th, 2011The Museum of Fine Arts is known to have the finest collection of Old Kingdom Egyptian art outside of Cairo. Its greatest treasure, which it acquired through shrewd negotiation in 1927, is the limestone, polychromed portrait bust of Prince Ankhaf. Egypt wants it back. The MFA response is more or less, bloody hell.
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Mass MoCA Confirms Anselm Kiefer Installation
Adding to Success of the LeWitt Building
By: - Aug 08th, 2011Since December of 2010 we have been asking Joe Thompson about a long term installation of works by the major German contemporary artist Anselm Kiefer. He squirmed and refused to answer the question. As we have previously reported the museum is now in the process of creating another long term installation similar to the enormously successful building devoted to the late Sol LeWitt. It greatly strengthens North Adams as a global art world destination.
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Eva Hesse At Institute of Contemporary Art
Studiowork Showcases A Visceral Experimentation
By: - Aug 07th, 2011Eva Hesse was arguably one of the 20th Century's great sculptors male or female. Challenging herself with new, nontraditional and experimental materials and techniques, her work both synthesizes and transcends Minimalism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Conceptual Art. The rarely seen and rather small Studiowork pieces now on view at the ICA are 50 process and test sculptural objects that indicate the thought and direction of the artist as her worked developed. The small size of the exhibit leaves the viewer wanting much more.
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Museum of Fine Arts Goes Contemporary
Linde Family Wing Opens Sept. 17-18
By: - Jul 23rd, 2011The MFA's Fall season this year will be as change-making as last year's. The entire West Wing will be transformed to a contemporary art museum, featuring art from 1970 to the present. In the special exhibition galleries, "Degas and the Nude" should be one of the most important shows of the year internationally.
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Jane Ingram Allen at South Boston Distillery Gallery
Water – Paper – Life
By: - Jul 19th, 2011Using transformative materials, in particular handmade paper, environmental artist Jane Ingram Allen has taken ordinary items that are ubiquitous in the City--manhole covers, signage. etc., and created a provocative installation. The work was crafted during a two week residency in South Boston at The Distillery Gallery. Allen both compels viewers to connect the presence of these items with water while seeking to raise awareness of this commodity as a fragile and quite precious but vital resource.
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2011 Maud Morgan Prize To Wendy Jacob
Cambridge Artist to Display at MFA in September
By: - Jul 13th, 2011Last given in 2006, the Maud Morgan Prize was initially established as a purchase prize for under recognized midcareer women artists. The MFA has been criticized for nor awarding this prize by the local community. It has now been slightly changed to be a direct cash prize of $10,000 rather than the initial $5000 purchase prize. Another change is that recognition will now be given to more distinguished women artists. A small MFA exhibit of the artist's work is part of the prize. This year's recipient, Wendy Jacob combines high purpose with sculptural forms.
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Cy Twombly Dies In Rome
Creator of A Unique Elusive Aesthetic
By: - Jul 12th, 2011The aesthetically hard to pin down master artist Cy Twombly was one of the giants of contemporary art of the last sixty years. His work has been embraced as well as vilified. It is provocative, disturbing and incomprehensible while being somehow brilliant and heroic. Leaving a legacy of art of undefinable and probably irrelevant interpretation, Twombly died in Rome last week. Despite notions to the contrary, he lived half the year in Italy and half the year in his native Virginia.
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Berkshire Collectors Jay and Jane Braus
Exhibition at the Berkshire Museum Thorugh October 11
By: - Jul 07th, 2011The fine arts collectors Jay and Jane Braus divide their time between summers in the Berkshires and winters in Florida. When they sold their home in Larchmont a collection of major abstraction expressionist works was liquidated. But those bare walls in a Florida condo started them going again. Through October a selection of works from their collection is on view at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield.
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'COLORS' by Sarah Sutro
Reflections on Planet Earth and Art
By: - Jul 04th, 2011Sarah Sutro is a painter, writer and poet. Her latest publication, COLORS, Passages through Art, Asia and Nature was published in 2010. This one hundred page book offers one thousand bits of wisdom, knowledge and information about living thoughtfully, carefully and well - here and abroad.
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Brandeis University Resolves Rose Art Museum Lawsuit
Museum to Observe Its 50th Year
By: - Jun 30th, 2011Today, Brandeis University president, Fred Lawrence stated in part "I am very pleased to inform you that Brandeis and the four plaintiffs involved in the Rose Art Museum litigation have reached an agreement to settle the case. As a result, their claims have been dismissed. In addition, the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General has officially terminated its review of Brandeis." The Rose will remain open.
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