In March 2020, Los Angeles-based artist Richard Nielsen began painting portraits of people in their COVID-19 face masks. On view at MASS MoCA, This is Not a Gag includes his first set of 49 paintings. Presented in a Zoom-like grid, the series shows the determination behind the eyes of artists, writers, and friends of the artist and MASS MoCA. The subject’s faces may be covered, but variations in masks and individual expressions speak volumes about our lives today. These paintings are not about the pandemic, per se, but about the fiercest and finest parts of human nature.

Howardena Pindell exhibits at the Shed. "Working on my commission for the Shed has been a very rewarding and healing experience. It allowed meto conceptualize an idea as a result of an experience I had as a child. I put it forth as a performance piece to a group of white women artists at the AIR Gallery where I was a founder in the early 1970s. They turned it down. I was the only non-white member of the gallery.

TheaterWorks is streaming live a production of Russian Troll Farm – A Workplace Comedy by Sarah Gancher. It is available through Nov. 2; the actors are performing from three different sites. It’s a coproduction with TheatreSquared of Fayetteville, Arkansas and in association with The Civilians.

Charles Henri Ford was America's first surrealist poet. He was also an artist, photographer, editor, publisher, diarist, filmmaker, painter, sculptor and world-class name-dropper. In the course of his ninety-three years he met everyone: Jean Cocteau, Dame Edith Sitwell, Paul Bowles, Salvador Dali, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe.

Thinking Cap Theatre’s ‘Laced’ will leave you hopeful for better days. The South Florida theater company is presenting a virtual production of Samantha Mueller's play. The engagement continues and ends this coming weekend.

Provincetown Arts Press celebrates 35th Anniversary Gala, which will be held on Tuesday, November 19 from 7–8pm via ZOOM, and announces the launch of its first Silent Art Auction, which will open on November 1.

Jefferson Mays will star in a new production of A Christmas Carol. Proceeds will benefit the hard-hit theater community, which has been devastated by the pandemic. A worldwide release is set for Saturday, Nov. 28.

Missing Paris? Van Gogh? Music? Impresario and superb clarinetist Joseph Rosen points the way to a magical Van Gogh exhibit with "Vincent" sung by Jim van Der Zee. Enjoy!

As I began to think about finishing my reading and reviewing Jed Perl’s monumental second volume of the life of Calder, the art world was inundated by the responses to the publication of Blake Gopnik’s thousand page book on Warhol. Yet again Mugar ferries us across the Styx of contemporary art history.

Newark, New Jersey has given us Philip Roth and LeRoi Jones among others. Now we have Tyshawn Sorey, moved south to a studio in Philadelphia, 'conducioning' at a triptych of computer screens on which seventeen performers have gathered to create one of Sorey’s Autoschhiams, a spontaneous composition.

Stories About The Old Days closes this delightful retrospective with a nostalgic reflection on the meaning of faith, art and friendship. Richardson-Jackson's direction provides an evocatively genuine space as the light filters through the red and gold stained glass windows of an old church. This two-person piece, is atmospheric, a feat which masterfully conquers the restrictions of the “zoom” style presentation.

Postponed Philp Guston exhibition rescheduled. The first of four venues will be the Museum of Fine Arts. It opens on May 1, 2022 and continue through that September 11. MFA director, Matthew Teiltelbaum, shares thoughts about the decision to postpone the controversial exhibition.

The Book as Art throughout the Centuries has led to a resurgence of artists creating Book Art in the time of eBooks. As an artistic discipline it has only been 70 years since its acceptance. The 5th European International Book Art Exhibition, 2020, celebrated the art form in the Karolyi Castle of Carei, Romania.

The script for a trilingual production of Our Town is available for licensing. 'Concord Theatricals has acquired licensing rights. Miami New Drama commissioned the adaptation and staged the world premiere in 2017.

MASS MoCA and the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center (BCRC) at MCLA are launching In Session, a series of four panel discussions on anti-racist work in museums, streamed live on MASS MocA's YouTube channel and Facebook page beginning on Thursday, December 10, at 6pm EST with upcoming dates to be announced soon.

A 24/7 online radio station plays the music of Broadway, Off-Broadway, the London stage, and much more. Connecticut Theater Critics Circle President and American Theatre Critics Association member Stuart Brown founded "Sounds of Broadway" in March 2019. Brown said he believes in engaging with listeners. In addition to operating his radio station, Brown is also a theater critic and a university administrator.

Israel Horovitz (March 31, 1939 – November 9, 2020) was an American playwright, director, actor and co-founder of the Gloucester Stage Company in 1979. He served as artistic director until 2006 and later served on the board, ex officio and as artistic director emeritus until his resignation in November 2017 after The New York Times reported allegations of sexual misconduct.

Get creative in the kitchen. All submissions will be exhibited during Hancock Holidays on Saturday, December 12. Winners receive free membership to the Village and kitchen swag from Shaker Mercantile.

The Clark Art Institute’s popular First Sundays Free program continues on Sunday, December 6, with a day celebrating music. Admission to the galleries is free all day.

Kev Berry is an award-winning playwright and a superb monologist.  In Harsh Cacophonies I and II,, he is directed by his usual collaborator, Alex Tobey. The monologue was created in three separate pieces, which can be performed as stand alones.  The three are joined for this production and work well together.  Two hours fly by, in part because Berry is in a manic state. His speech and stories are always clear, but often rush.  This locates us in the urgent terrain from which his stories grow.

Count on Bard to bring us unexpected, deserving programs concert after concert.  Henri Tomasi’s Fanfares Liturgigues opened this program.  The fanfares were conceived as part of Tomasi’s opera Don Juan de Manara. They premiered as a stand alone a decade before the opera opened in Munich. What a splendid work.

Hancock Shaker Village felt like a home-away-from-home this year. In a year when we are counting our heroes, the Village has had many.

The son of famed artist Allan Houser, Haozous has drawn inspiration from his Apache culture, Indigenous and world art, and from his father’s artworks. “I’ve wanted to make this statement for many years,” said Haozous, artist and Executive Director of the Allan Houser Foundation.

Boston Lyric Opera, ever on the lookout for startling innovations that work, has hired Darrah to produce a stop motion feature-length animated version of Philip Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

Fred Taylor breathes life into this narrative, literally having a conversation with you, including many hilarious anecdotes, home-spun punch lines but also always making you feel like you were re-living the moment with him. The Taylor bio has been written by jazz historian Richard Vacca.