Opinion
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Insider’s View of the Protests Against the MFA’s ‘Boston Masssacre’—1999
Adapted from Forthcoming Book
By: - Mar 03rd, 2025Patricia Hills is a leftist/ feminist scholar, professor and curator. Since retirement from teaching art history at Boston University she has continued with research and writing. This essay is a chapter from her soon to be published memoir Feisty Feminist Challenges the Art World. Here she vividly relates the Boston Massacre when MFA director Malcolm Rogers fired renowned curators pursuant to his vision of One Museum. In a corporate, manner unique to the well mannered art world, they were escorted from the museum. Hills organized protest against this initiative. She endured a counterattack from the museum but was supported by Boston University.
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The Strength in Yielding
A Core Principle of Chinese Martial Arts and Life
By: - Feb 25th, 2025A stiff tree may withstand a strong wind for a time, but eventually, it will snap. A willow, on the other hand, bends and sways, yielding to the wind’s force, yet it survives even the fiercest storms. This is the essence of yielding: adapting, flowing, and ultimately overcoming by not resisting directly.
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The Mount 2025
Readings Music Sculpture and More
By: - Feb 19th, 2025“Our 2025 season reflects The Mount’s unique intersection of history, literature, the arts, nature, and community. With Edith Wharton as our muse, we are excited to offer an illuminating season celebrating the sharing of ideas, stories, art, and music, while providing space for our community to gather, reflect, and wander in the natural beauty of the Berkshires,” says Susan Wissler, The Mount’s executive director.
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Kultur Klash
Trumping the Arts
By: - Feb 15th, 2025The arts are the canary in a coal mine. Any government sponsored attack on culture diminishes dissent. Autocracy enforces a mandate of disinformation. Serfs and slaves were denied literacy. Ideas are anathema to oligarchies and must be repressed. Nazis burned books. School boards and libraries ban them.
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Diet and Health
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic on Medicine
By: - Feb 04th, 2025The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine (Huangdi Neijing), compiled over 2,400 years ago, remains the leading foundational treatise on Traditional Chinese Medicine. The Huangdi Neijing addresses all aspects of inner medicine and health, and is required reading for anyone interested in understanding TCM and ancient Chinese culture.
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The Vibration of Creation
Our Bodies and Spiritual Practices
By: - Jan 13th, 2025At the most fundamental level, everything in the universe is made up of energy vibrating at different frequencies. From the smallest subatomic particles to the largest celestial bodies, everything is in a constant state of motion, creating a unique vibrational signature. This includes our physical bodies, thoughts, emotions, and even the seemingly empty space around us.
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Return to Five Immortals Temple
Special Delivery and Renewal
By: - Dec 04th, 2024There is the excitement of the going, the anticipation of arrival, and a purpose to be fulfilled. There is excitement in the coming back, the thought of sleeping in your own bed, of waking up in familiar surroundings. Nonetheless, more than 40 hours of travel, flights, train rides, bus rides, and climbs, are daunting at any age. In my case, that is a few weeks shy of age 75.
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Same As It Ever Was
By: - Nov 10th, 2024n the morning after the election, I woke up to an America that is the “same as it ever was,” to borrow lyrics from The Talking Heads. I just didn’t realize what that “same” was. America had spoken, revealing its true self at this moment to me, and I am deeply saddened by what I heard.
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China's Wudang Mountain
Plethora of Ancient Temples
By: - Sep 25th, 2024The most iconic Daoist temple on Wudang Mountain is the Golden Summit Temple, situated atop the highest peak, Jade Emperor Peak. This temple is dedicated to the Jade Emperor, a supreme deity in Daoist mythology, and is a symbol of the mountain’s spiritual significance. The temple’s architecture is awe-inspiring, with intricate carvings, colorful murals, and a grand main hall housing a colossal statue of the Jade Emperor.
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Surrealism. Earth. Dreams.
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The Eight Immortals
Pantheon of Tao
By: - Jun 25th, 2024Lu Dongbin, also known as Lü Dongbin or Lu Tung-Pin, is a towering figure in Chinese mythology and religion. As one of the Eight Immortals, a revered pantheon within Daoism, he transcends the boundaries of a mere historical figure. He embodies wisdom, benevolence, and mastery of the Dao (the Way), leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire generations. This exploration delves into the life, legends, and significance of Lu Dongbin, the scholar-immortal who wields both sword and wisdom.
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The Flow
By: - Jun 17th, 2024Wu Wei is a lifelong journey, not a destination. It’s about cultivating a sense of ease and harmony in the face of life’s complexities. By embracing its principles, we can learn to flow with the current, navigate life’s rapids with greater grace, and find a deeper sense of peace and fulfillment along the way.
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The Unclouded Mirror
Reflecting The Wu Wei in Daoism
By: - Jun 03rd, 2024In the vast tapestry of Daoist thought, the mirror emerges as a potent symbol, not for vanity, but for cultivating a state of unclouded perception. Unlike a typical mirror, the ideal Daoist mirror reflects only what is truly present – the here and now, unfiltered by desires or judgments.
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The Duality of Breath Yin and Yang
Cultivating Inner Power
By: - May 13th, 2024The core concept in Daoist understanding of the breath is Qi (pronounced “chee”). Qi is not simply oxygen, but a subtle energy force believed to permeate all living things and the universe itself. It is the dynamic interplay of Yin and Yang, the fundamental polarities that govern existence. Deep, mindful breathing is seen as a way to cultivate and refine Qi, leading to improved health, inner peace, and a deeper connection to the Dao.
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Marjorie Minkin Recalls Clement Greenberg and Kenworth Moffett
Mentoring of an Emerging Artist
By: - May 08th, 2024I first met Clement Greenberg after Ken (Moffett) invited me to go to Toronto in the summer of 1981 where he and Greenberg were on a panel discussion at the Toronto Art Fair. I accompanied Greenberg and Moffett on their visit to at least 20 artists’ studios in Toronto. It was the best art education of my life!
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Unhurried Grace
Patience of a Forest Stream
By: - Mar 31st, 2024While offering instruction in the various taiji forms I teach, I often refer to a forest stream and urge my students to become it, ever-flowing, to find and then move at the pace of their breath, ever-flowing, just as the stream finds its pace. The stream does not move from one place to the next; there is no line of demarcation between places. The stream simply flows.
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Power of Stillness
Present Moment Awareness
By: - Mar 21st, 2024One exercise I suggest to my students is a “slow by slow” day each week: walk just a little slower than you usually walk; speak just a little slower than you usually speak; eat just a little slower than you usually eat. Not slow motion, and not so anyone else would notice, but slower than usual.
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Conflating Lovecraft, Mugar and Houellebecq
iterary Sources for an Artist’s Work
By: - Mar 18th, 2024Of course my painting is not in the realm of the noxious monsters of Lovecraft but the eventual push of the visual event off the surface seems to speak to a similar aggressive desire to reach out and engage the viewer. It also begins to abandon the pleasant color field that had dominated my work from the beginning of the millennium.
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Blue Heron's Stillness
By: - Mar 03rd, 2024The blue heron, a majestic bird with piercing yellow eyes and a spear-like beak, embodies a unique paradox. It is a creature of both profound stillness and lightning-fast action. But it is the heron’s stillness that truly captivates, a quality that has enthralled artists, writers, and philosophers for centuries. This stillness isn’t just an absence of movement; it’s a potent force, a language of patience, focus, and a deep connection with the environment.
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Squirrels, Taiji and Stillness
By: - Feb 27th, 2024The squirrel comes each day to eat peanuts with me on one of the benches in the meditation garden that surrounds my training and teaching deck. Sometimes she will sit in my lap, sometimes she will sit on the cushion beside me, and sometimes she just sits on the cinder block armrest. But she comes every day, and several times at that.
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Plagiarism, Its Permutations, and How to Avoid Them
There Are Few Clear Guidelines
By: - Jan 09th, 2024Plagiarism has been very much in the news. Even the recent president of Harvard has been under the gun. And yet there seems to be no firm guidelines to instruct non-academics and even academics as to how to spot evidence of plagiarism. What follows is a meditation on plagiarism and how to avoid it.
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Jeff Koons Kills Brooklyn Rail Article
Chilling Impact on Arts Criticism
By: - Dec 17th, 2023As the New York Times reported on December 17, “When (Romy) Golan arrived at Koons’s 10th Avenue studio in New York last winter for her interview, she said she was asked to sign a filming release giving the artist the right to “view and approve any footage, still images and/or promotional material that are proposed for use.” Golan had no plans to film her interview or take photographs but signed the release." Koons effectively killed the story in Brooklyn Rail.
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Jimmy Carter and The Cairo
Looking at Old Snapshots
By: - Dec 05th, 2023Now a Berkshire resident Steve Nelson and his wife Jan resided high above D.C. when Jimmy Carter became president. This piece was inspired by looking at vintage snapshots.
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Jane Hudson’s Tarot
Vernissage and Reading
By: - Sep 23rd, 2023Last night I sat for my first ever Tarot reading. Well, Kindah. Not a full reading but just one card and a brief analysis. The format was devised to accommodate many visitors. Jane Hudson became energized explaining the significance of The Tower.
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American Tenor Stephen Gould Dies at 61
His Performances Were Always A Treat
By: - Sep 20th, 2023Berkshire Fine Arts was fortunate to hear Stephen Gould sing Parsifal in Bayreuth two years ago. He retired from Bayreuth this summer when he was diagnosed with incurable cancer.
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