Metropolitan Museum of Art

At the beginning of WWII, the United States War Department was in a dilemma. They needed a more modular, lightweight way of splinting wounded personnel. They turned to the creative Venice Beach based designers, Charles and Ray Eames, to help solve the problem. The Eameses had been working on molding plywood for the previous few years. Having accessible the Navy's facilities, their design team was able to develop a molded plywood splint. Sculptural and elegant, it is now a design icon.

The 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.

The Boston MFA has made a serious commttment to contemporary decorative arts. This has been a cumulative effort by Director Malcolm Rogers over the last decade and half. With the opening of the Linde Family Contemporary Art Wing in October, there was the opening of the first dedicated gallery to contemporary decorative art, the Farago Gallery. To curate this gallery and to integrate contemporary decorative arts, craft and design with the rest of contemporary visual art, the museum hired Emily Zilber as the first contemporary decorative arts curator. And this isn't all.

While the primary galleries of the Clark Art Museum will close in November for the final phase of a $145 expansion and renovation it will maintain programming on a limited basis. How that reflects on the norm of 200,000 annual visitors remains to be seen. Reducing the Clark in the mix will have a major impact on cultural tourism in the Northern Berkshires for the next few years. The construction, however, will create 500 temporary jobs with a $9 million economic impact.

During a drive around Newport, Rhode Island's famed Cliff Walk one encounters not just those fabulous cottages of the Gilded Age but also the armed fortress of the Patriaca clan. It is not a tourist attraction and drive by fast if you know what's good for you. With its craggy coast of nooks and crannies from early on it has been a smuggler's paradise and now a haven for mavens, Best known for fabulous jazz on a summer's day and lots of other cool stuff. We have a complete cheat sheet with contact info. Clip and save for a glorious getaway from the steamy city. The Vanderbilts traveled by yacht but you can get there with a car.

Concluding our attendance at the sixth annual Berkshire International Film Festival yesterday we attended three films: Part Time Fabulous, On the Ice, !Woman Art Revolution. While problematic for different reasons the films were consistent with the remarkable quality of the festival organized by founder and artistic director Kelley Vickery.

The works of contemporary European and African artists will take their place alongside French Impressionism in summer 2011 at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. From June 12 through October 16, visitors will encounter the monumental sculptures of acclaimed artist El Anatsui in the Clark’s Stone Hill Center, and from June 12 through September 5, Spaces: Photographs by Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth will be on view in the Clark’s original 1955 museum building.

The Hunter Center at Mass MoCA was packed for another of the ongoing collaborations with Jacob’s Pillow featuring the Cuban folkloric music and dance group Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. If it takes a village a Northern Berkshires audience bonded with the traditions of rural Cuba that span centuries reaching back beyond slavery to origins in Africa.

For its size the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute is regarded as one of the finest and best endowed regional museums. Now in another phase of expansion, the Clark is also endowing positions and selling a Renoir for $15 million. The sale of a "redundant' Renoir, as chief curator, Richard Rand describes it, will be use for yet to be determined acquisitions. In a depressed art market, it is an opportune time to have cash on hand.

The rituals of the Vienna Actionist, Hermann Nitsch, often entailed slaughtered animals, their blood and entrails, nude bodies and music which he composed. He is planning a major event in New York with the Mike Weiss Gallery.

In one of the most notable exhibitions of the season MoMA installed some 250 works, including a hundred paintings in Abstract Expressionist New York. The project was installed in the fourth floor galleries of its permanent collection. This is a fascinating but flawed overview of the New York School as seen through the narrow lens of generations of the museum's directors, trustees and curators. It has evoked a range of critical responses from praise to outrage.

In certain aspects of its collection, Old Kingdom Egypt and Asiatic Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is a world class museum. With the creation of the Art of the Americas wing the museum hopes to rank second to none among American museums. But, as the Bard would say, "What's in a name?" A closer look reveals formidable depth and glaring gaps in the attempt to cover 3,000 years of art on two continents.

The British born director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Malcolm Rogers, has worked over the past decade with architect, Lord Norman Foster, to expand the museum by some 28%. During an era of economic downturn Rogers oversaw raising $504 million for construction, acquisitions, conservation and programming for the new Art of the Americas wing. It was launched with a dedication and media event. It is anticipated that attendance will spike over the next year putting millions into the local economy.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, announced jointly today that, effective immediately, the Museum will acknowledge Egypt’s title to 19 ancient Egyptian objects in its collection since early in the 20th century.

Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy and Germany, 1918- 1936 examines art during an ere overshadowed by the recovery from World War I and the rise of fascism that would result in World War II. This insightful exhibition is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through January 9.

An Incurable Classicist, an exhibition of 21 oil paintings by renowned artist Shao Fan, will be on view at Contrasts Gallery in Shanghai October 10 to November 11, 2010 at No 181 Middle Jiangxi Road, g/f, Shanghai, China. Shao Fan’s paintings are modern interpretations of traditional ‘Literati’ thought and aesthetics, exploring the ramifications of philosophical and cultural changes taking place in China today. His first major solo exhibition.

On July 7, Ringo Starr's 70th birthday, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will inaugurate a special display of his gold-plated snare drum that will remain on view to the public through December 2010 in the Museum's second-floor Musical Instruments Galleries. On loan from Ringo Starr, it was originally presented to him by the Ludwig Drum Company during The Beatles' 1964 visit to Chicago when the legendary rock group, in which Mr. Starr was the drummer, was on its first tour of the United States.

Recently the art historian John L. Ward posted a comment on our coverage of the Edwin Dickinson exhibition at the Preovincetown Art Association and Museum. He is the author of Edwin Dickinson, A Critical History of His Paintings. Correspondence with him resulted in this meaty and provocative article. This is our fourth review of an important but neglected artist.

Considered one of America's most important Modernists, Sculptor John Storrs (1885-1956) invigorated a previously academic medium with a vitality and dynamism virtually absent in the United States. This exhibit is the first of the artist's work in over 20 years. It is a quality touch of early 20th Century Modernism that was informed by and also informed the stretching of creative visual expression. This small but strong exhibition is a must see.

90 objects of ceremony and leisure â€" murals, paintings, furniture, architectural and garden components, jades and cloisonné â€" will be on view at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts. The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City will reveal the contemplative life and refined vision of one of history’s most influential rulers with artworks from one of the most magnificent places in the world.

Jacob’s Pillow kicks off Festival 2010 on June 19 with the Season Opening Gala, the world-renowned dance organization’s biggest annual fundraising event. Following an exclusive Gala performance in the Ted Shawn Theatre and the presentation of the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award to choreographer and director Bill T. Jones, guests are treated to dinner and dancing to live music. This evening is widely celebrated as a signature summer event in the Berkshires and attracts a multitude of dance lovers, celebrities, government dignitaries, and visitors from around the world every year.

The tenure of outgoing Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz is winding down. He leaves in dispgrace vilified by the academic and museum world for proposing to close the renowned Rose Art Museum and sell off part of not all of a collection valued at $350 million. The latest scheme/ scam is to rent the collection in partnership with Sothebys. While the Rose is a Rose this fleur du mal just stinks.

In an historic decision for the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Board of Trustees has voted unanimously to break ground on a new museum building in downtown Manhattan in May 2011. Located in the Meatpacking District on Gansevoort Street between West Street and the High Line, the six-floor, 195,000-square-foot building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, will provide the Whitney with essential new space for its collection, exhibitions, and education and performing arts programs in one of New York’s most vibrant neighborhoods.

The Amherst Public Arts Commission (APAC) announces the inaugural Amherst Biennial to take place in October and November 2010 at the Nacul Center, Amherst Town Hall, and additional satellite sites in town. The jurors for the Biennial include the artist/ cuator, Terry Rooney, the artist Susan Loring-Wells and Tony Maroulis the former co founder and director of the gallery Wunderarts.

Petah Coyne's baroque works, delicately combining tinted, waxed flowers and taxidermy, will rise up from the floor, and hanging sculptures will descend from the ceiling, taking full advantage of the multiple vantage points of MASS MoCA's vast gallery spaces. The exhibition titled Everything That Rises Must Converge (after a short story by Flannery O'Connor) will open at Mass MoCA on Saturday, May 29, with an opening reception from 5-7 PM.