Opinion
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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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Nelsons and his Wife Leave New Met Tosca
See Them at Tanglewood on August 26th
By: - Jul 14th, 2017The new Met Tosca will premier with James Levine replacing Andris Nelsons at the helm. Kristine Opolais stepped out of the title role. They are together in Tanglewood for what promise to be a starry evening on August 26th.
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Critical Condition
ATCA Conference in San Francisco
By: - Jul 04th, 2017In the age of social media everyone is a critic., Some enthusiasts post their "reviews" and images to Twitter and Facebook before curtain calls.That was he elephant in the room as some 80 of the 250 members of American Theatre Critics Association gathered for an annual conference this time in San Francisco. In addition to several days of seeing theatre there were meetings and panel discussions focused on issues and ideas in the profession.
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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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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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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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Met Opera Ends Season with a Bang
Alagna Sings Cyrano
By: - May 11th, 2017Opera is a form of many pieces. When the set, production, singing and orchestra work together, opera makes its own case. Cyrano de Bergerac realizes the seemingly Sisyphean task beautifully.
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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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Tilson Thomas and Gehry's New New World
Miami Beach Leads the Way to Future of Classical Music
By: - Apr 18th, 2017Frank Gehry babysat for Michael Tilson Thomas in Los Angeles where they both grew up. Now they are building a new world for classical music together.
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How to Watch a Movie
Salvation in a Darkened Room
By: - Apr 10th, 2017This think piece explores the difference between movies and cinema. In a compelling overview Kempf states that "I go to a lot of movies for a variety of reasons: to learn about other worlds/people/times through fictions and documentaries, to measure the zeitgeist, to ease a 100°+ summer day, but my primary desire is to experience the art of cinema, a remarkable art that, even more than stage, is collaborative and incorporates the entire constellation of the arts."
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Can the Metropolitan Opera Survive
The House is One-Quarter Full
By: - Apr 10th, 2017Sitting in the 7th row of the orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night, in a skimpy house, most of my neighbors had paid between $20 and $37.50 for their tickets. Fortunately for the Met Opera, HD fans have a different take on Met productions than people who like their opera live.
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ICA To Lease Expanded Space
Two if by Sea in East Boston
By: - Mar 07th, 2017When the Institute of Contemporary Art opened its waterfront home there were awards for the dramatic design by Diller Scofido and Renfro. Immediately, however, it was obvious that with 65,000 square feet, and just its top floor for exhibitions, there was no plan for expansion and growth. For the next five to ten years the ICA is leasing a 15,000 square foot industrial place in East Boston. Visitors will commute by ferry to the seasonal Watershed which opens in the summer of 2018.
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Rockefeller Offers Hamilton Matinees
Title 1 School Children See the Best Show in Town
By: - Mar 02nd, 2017Alexander Hamilton may have created the financial system that made building John D. Rockefeller's fortune possible. Now Rockefeller money is being used to fund tickets for Title 1 school children to attend the hottest show in town, "Hamilton."
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Denver's Unique Strategy to Fund the Arts
One Cent from Every Ten Dollars Spent Goes a Long Way
By: - Feb 26th, 2017There is a 0.1 percent sales tax for arts and culture in Denver’s seven-county metro area. At just one cent for every ten dollars it generates $1.85 billion annually in economic activity, creates 10,205 jobs, and stimulates $520 million in tourism.
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Federal Support for the Arts Under Attack
Five Boston Museum Directors Express Concern
By: - Feb 24th, 2017Five Boston museum directors have signed a letter of concern over reports that the National Endowment for the Arts is under threat of being abolished, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Under the conservative agenda of the Trump adminsitration this is an attack on the arts in America. Guarding the Trumps in NY, DC and Palm Beach for a week is on a par with endowment support.
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The Science of Vaccinations
Scratch and Sniff
By: - Feb 15th, 2017Polio is widely regarded, along with smallpox, as vaccination’s other “unmistakable success,” and in recent years the World Health Organization has pronounced it confined to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Vote for North Adams
Contest for $500,000 Grant
By: - Feb 09th, 2017North Adams has bsen selected as one of five finalists for Main Street Season Two. Please help by casting a vote once a day from now through February 16. The prize for the Small Business Revolution contest is $500,000.
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Pittsfield's Four Freedom's Rally
Colonial Theatre Saturday, January 28
By: - Jan 27th, 2017Recently The Colonial Thatre in Pittsfield was the site for a packed gathering as a part of the national Women's March in protest of the extremist threats of President Donald Trump. The Colonial Theatre will be a part of the national Four Freedom's Rally on Saturday, January 28. Kate Maguire, the artistic director of the Berkshire Theatre Group, which includes the Colonial has taken a stand in activist resistance.
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Decline in Theatre and Arts Media Coverage
Matt Windman Panel for American Theatre Critics Association
By: - Jan 08th, 2017Matt Windman, author of “The Critics Say…57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future,” led a panel discussion during the NY ATCA conference on the state of theater criticism in today’s world of social media bloggers and a decreasing number of full-time print theater critics
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Love at a Distance by Kaija Saariaho
Heralded Across the Continent, So So at the Met Opera
By: - Dec 22nd, 2016An important opera by a major composer is set well at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Met Orchestra under Susanna Mälkki was magnificent. The orchestral score is one of beauty and terror, evoking the sea and the dangers of love. It is the story that provides an arc, and this production missed it entirely, leaving the experience flat.
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Holiday Leftovers
The New Agit-Prop
By: - Nov 26th, 2016A friend wrote of spending Thanksgiving in the kitchen and concern that I had passed mine contemplating the pending decline and fall of an American empire. The response set forth some concerns for the new era of social and political commentary. The end is near and starts now.
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Winter at The Mount
Events Through February
By: - Nov 18th, 2016Now that it is assured of ongoing financial stability The Mount, a landmark in the Berkshires, is moving toward increased winter programming., Here is a schedule of upcoming events.
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Gloucester Author Peter Anastas
Responding to Olson's Place as the Geography of Our Being
By: - Sep 24th, 2016During our recent visits including a residency at the Gloucester Writers Center we encountered the author Peter Anastas. He is an activist and author of novels based on Gloucster. In particular we are interested in his relationship with Charles Olson and his influence on the rich literary culture of Cape Ann. With permission we are reposting an excerpt of a long interview between Anastas and Karl Young.
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Boston Globe Shrinks Fine Arts Coverage
Eliminating Cate McQuaid's Weekly Gallery Column
By: - Sep 21st, 2016Bad news continues for the arts community. The Boston Globe has announced that it is elminating Cate McQuaid's weekly gallery column. Kington Gallery is circulating a petition to have the vital coverage reinstated.
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Roger Nierenberg Teaches Listening
Kodaly, Britten, Wagner and Ravel at DeMenna Center
By: - Sep 20th, 2016The conundrum of declining symphony audiences is being addressed with all sorts of efforts. The Roger Nierenberg proposal, mixing the audience in and with the orchestra, is a bold and helpful approach.
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