Metropolitan Museum of Art

During the opening gala of Jacob's Pillow on June 19 the dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones will receive the festival's Fourth Annual award. Jones won a Tony Award for Spring Awakening and is the director of Fela a musical which is now on Broadway. The Jacob's Pillow award comes with a prize of $25,000.

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) will celebrate its 111th Commencement exercises on Saturday, May 22, 2010, beginning at 11 a.m., in the Amsler Campus Center Gymnasium.Anita F. Hill, Attorney and Brandeis University Professor of Law, Public Policy, and Women's Studies, will deliver the keynote address. Among others honored with by Berkshire based and internationally renowned artist Stephen Hannock.

Dr. Barnes hired the best Philadelphia Lawyers he could to protect his collection in Merion, PA from the Philadelphia Main Line toffs and phonies. Yet, somehow the estimated $25 billion collection of Modern and Post-Impressionist masterpieces has been appropriated through politics, power, wealth and subterfuge. This well-crafted documentary by Don Argott shows what, how and where it happened.

The Neue Galerie in New York organized the first American retrospective of the German artist Otto Dix (1891-1969). The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. While the New York installation was widely viewed as a mess the exhibition had a profound impact. Many critics and publications list the Dix survey as among the best exhibitions of 2010.

Joe Finnegan, a former Wall Street floor trader, who evokes the heart-throb, Don, in TV's Mad Men, moved his family four years ago to Williamstown. He hooked up with boyhood friend Steve Lawson to become President of his Williamstown Film Festival. We talked with Finnegan about gearing up for his first season as General Manager of the prestigious but challenged Williamstown Theatre Festival.

The designer of the first laptop computer (1980) Bill Moggridge was named Director of the Smithsonian's New York based Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the National Design Museum. He is the first designer to be given this administrative post. After a wonderful career designing strategic elements for a rapidly changing technological society, he will be attempting to add depth and breath to a museum that should better reflect our aesthetic as well as functional past, present and future. However, will the skills of the master designer resonate as a museum administrator or Smithsonian bureaucrat?

Only the Metropolitan Museum of Art has the clout to secure loans of the most iconic narrative paintings of American art from the Colonial Period to the beginning of World War One. It may be the most ambitious and comprehensive survey of American art ever assembled. The exhibition is on view at the LA County Museum of Art February 28 to May 23.

The Bauhaus 1919-1933 was the most influential school of avant-garde art and design in the 20th Century. It is famous for its faculty, students and its extraordinary cross discipline conversation about thee nature of art in the modern age. MoMA's exhibit is probably the best presentation ever organized about the quality, craft and depth of this visual and cultural dialogue. There is much to learn and see here. It should not be missed.

During this rainy and mostly miserable summer the exhibition "Dove/O'Keeffe Circles of Influence" at the Clark Art Institute has provided shelter from the storm. Visitors have flocked to this populat exhibition which ends on September 7.

Love him or hate him, Francis Bacon was one of the most compelling artists of the 20th century. This is the first major retrospective in 20 years devoted to the painter. The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts this seminal exhibition through August 16.

A breath of fresh air for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is a generational show that focuses on a close group of avant-garde artists who combined ideas and imagery.

There are many highlights offered in the dense schedule for the 2009 season of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Founded in 1914 the PAAM has served one of the nation's oldest and most renowned artist colonies. The exhibitions and programming reflect that rich history.

Drawing on great depth in its collection the Williams College Museum of Art, from July 18 through September 20, will present "Prendergast in Italy." The exhibition features works by Maurice Prendergast (American, 1858–1924). The exhibition will be accompanied by a major catalogue and will travel internationally.

Depending upon your point of view the installation "Universal Gym" by the artist Thomas Hirshorn is insightful and provocative or just a cluttered bunch of workout equipment taped to the floor.

With the unanimous decision of the Board of Trustees, Jehuda Reinharz, the President of Brandeis University has decided to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its collection appraised at $350 million but worth about half of that estimate in the current art market. It is a desperate measure to stabalize the cash strapped university whose donors have been hit hard by the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scandal.

José Ortiz brings a distinguished resume and administrative experience to the Harvard Art Museum at a time of major renovation, construction and fiscal crisis. He appears to be the right person for this strategic job in a time of sensitive transition.

As an artist, writer, and teacher Gabriel Laderman has been a leading realist painter. With permission of the curators, David Carbone and Lincoln Perry, we are publishing their essays for the traveing retrospective which is now on view at the Museum of Art of the University of New Hampshire.

Sally Mann is a unique figure in the world of photography. She developed her technique and style in an artistic backwater, Lexington, Virginia, with virtually no conversation or mentoring. After nearly twenty years of solitary work, she became a leading narrative and expressionistic artistic photographer without the normal contacts, relationships and networking. Her work is provocative and evocative.

Between now and 2010 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is under construction with a massive renovation and additions designed by Lord Norman Foster. But for visitors it's business as usual with and enticing schedule of special exhibitions.

Sting worked with the artist Stephen Hannock to create something unique for his hometown of Newcastle. It was more a collaboration than a commission.

From 1935 to 1944 the Farm Security Administration dispatched some of the best photographers of the era to document the strife of American farmers. These three small books give a glimpse of the 250,000 images that were produced.

Damian Loeb is one of the best narrative, representational painters of his generation. After a messy departure from Mary Boone Gallery he recently had his first New York show in five years at the prestigious Acquavella Gallery.

After a Global economic meltdown it will hardly be business as usual for the recently booming art market. Like the greed and excess on Wall Street there will be a lot of blame and finger pointing. Hopefully the bottoming out may enduce new realiities and even result in more relevant art.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is currently celebrating masterpieces of Spanish Art. In addition to a survey of Old Masters there is a reprospective of the major living Spanish realist Antonio Lopez Garcia. It is the first such survey by a major American museum. Nine of the 55 works by this artists are drawn from the permanent collection of the MFA.

In July it will be 20 years since Tom Krens left the Williams College Museum of Art to become director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. His resignation was announced today. He has changed forever the mandate for major museums and how they are managed.