Museum of Fine Arts

The Boston artist, Kahlil Gibran, is best remembered for his welded steel and bronze sculptures. Recently the Ogunquit Museum of American Art presented an exhibition of small early paintings that make us reconsider the relationship to his teacher Karl Zerbe and the Boston Expressionists.

Ekua Holmes (born 1955) is an artist, community activist and lifelong resident of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood whose body of work explores themes of childhood, family bonds, memory and resilience. This summer, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), presents Paper Stories, Layered Dreams: The Art of Ekua Holmes, focused on her award-winning children’s book illustrations, which reveal stories of self-determination, love and community.

This summer, New Light: Encounters and Connections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), brings more than 60 works of art from across the collection—including 23 newly acquired contemporary pieces—into thought-provoking dialogue. Organized into 21 “conversations,” the exhibition juxtaposes each contemporary work with one or two rarely seen objects acquired earlier in the Museum’s history.

Juneteenth dates back to June 19, 1865, when news of the Civil War’s end reached Galveston, Texas—nearly two and a half years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The MFA has hosted a community celebration marking the holiday since 2013.

Beginning May 29, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), will lift mask requirements for visitors and staff, in alignment with reopening plan updates from the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Evans Way in Boston, representatives of Mrs. Gardner welcome you to her home. In the original Palace, art is hung by her direction. The work of contemporary artists in residence hangs in the new wing. You are richly rewarded by a visit to Isabella's place.

Peter Brooke: Light Slides will open to the public on Friday, April 30.  Due to Covid-19 precautions, there will be no public reception for the artist.  The artist will be present on May 15 and 22 from 1-4pm to chat with visitors.  Gallery NAGA’s hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 to 5, with no appointment necessary. Brooke’s paintings are fabrications based solely on memories of his travels and surroundings.

The world needs new heroines, and Dodson creates them for this exhibition. In her new series of wood sculptures, Dodson re-imagines Albrecht Durer’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” as Amazon warriors.

The works featured are inspired by Andy Moerlein’s fascination with ancient practice of collecting and displaying unusual and often awkward stones. Brought indoors and placed on pedestals, these stones (Scholars Rocks, Viewing Stones) are transformed into icons of personal or imagined journeys. These rocks have influenced philosophers and artists for thousands of years.

“This extraordinary collection of images reminds us of photography’s power to preserve and amplify the full emotional range of lived experience. Together, these 48 photographs serve as both memory and documentary evidence of the extremes of war. They are powerful and memorable,” said Matthew Teitelbaum, Ann and Graham Gund Director. “Imagine the journey: passed from the photographer to a fellow prisoner in the Lodz Ghetto, hidden and brought to New York City in a small envelope, passed from one generation to another after a lifetime of care, and now preserved permanently in one of America’s great collections of photography. That, too, is powerful and memorable.”

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reopens February 3!.

In 2015, Michael Conforti retired as director of the Clark Art Institute after some 20 years. The Clark is very different now then what he signed on for. Today, the Clark hosts summer blockbuster shows and is one of the nations foremost research centers. From the beginning, it has had close ties with Williams College where Conforti teaches a graduate course in museum studies. He oversaw the expansion and renovation with architect Tadao Ando. While running the Clark he was on the road and hard to pin down. Now retired, we worked together on an extensive overview of his career, accomplishments, and issues for museums.

The exhibition comprises a mix of both studio paintings as well as self portraits dating to the 80s and 90s.  The studio paintings reflect Schwartz’s long history of using her space as her subject matter.

After a long and successful career as a sculptor in the tradition of constructivist abstraction Christopher Sproat withdrew from the mainstream art world. On his property in Putney Vermont he has created Black Box a private museum. This legacy project is open to the public by appointment.

Faced with a spike in new cases of the coronavirus Mayor Marty Walsh has taken action to flatten the curve. Starting tomorrow categories of businesses and cultural institutions will be closed for the next three weeks. Even with vaccines it is too early to say if there will be business as usual for the arts this summer in the Berkshires.

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.

After 22 years as a curator of the deCodova Museum, Dr. Nick Capasso, for the past 8 years has been director of the Fitchburg Art Museum. It is one of the poorest regions of the state. The community is 35% Latino and 55% of school children speak Spanish at home. The museum is unique for its bilingual initiatives and community outreach. There is diversity in all aspects of its exhibitions and programming. The museum shows New England artists. The collection has grown with an emphasis on photography, African, African American, and American art. Meeting daunting challenges the Fitchburg Art Museum is a remarkable success story.

The retrospective "Philip Guston Now" was scheduled to open in June 2001 at the National Gallery. It would travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, then to Tate Modern in London, and finally, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Of 125 paintings and 75 drawings some 24 works caricature the Ku Klux Klan. Fearing backlash the museums have postponed to 2024 to develop programming that contextualizes the work. The MFA has a history of ambivalence to the artist's work. From 1973 to 1978 he taught a graduate seminar at Boston University.

George Crossan Seybolt (1915-1993) was president and chairman of the William Underwood Company, best known for its canned Deviled Ham. He was recruited to the board of trustees by the director, Perry T. Rathbone. When be became president of the board there was constant conflict. Seybolt mico managed the museum and ousted Rathbone over the Raphael incident. His personal appointment for director, Merrill Rueppel, proved to be a disaster. He was fired after a Globe exposé. Seybolt went on to be a museum lobbyist and visionary. It's what we discussed in 1977.

Elsa Dorfman was the limner of the Beat Generation. She made deadpan, large-format Polaroid potraits of her celebrity pals as well as ordinary folks. She passed away a few months ago but is superbly recalled in a Netflix documentary by Errol Morris. It's so like Elsa who is regarded as a major artist but described herself repeatedly as a "nice Jewish girl."

How one man lovingly – and obsessively - constructed his very own movie palace in the basement of his suburban home.

During the pandemic Northeastern University has restricted access to artists in its historic African American Master Artists in Residency Program. It was founded in 1978 by Dana C. Chandler, Jr. Speaking out against the university for its actions against AAMRP is Dana Chandler III the son of the founder,

When the British born Malcolm Rogers took over the Museum of Fine Arts in 1994 it had a $4.5 million annual deficit and was generally moribund. It was better than he found it when he departed in 2015. He left a bricks and mortar legacy of The American Wing designed by Lord Norman Foster. Under a mantra of One Museum, however, he dismantled the traditional departments, fired renowned curators, or forced them to leave. He created a structure of mega departments staffed by cooperative curators. The current director, Matthew Teitelbaum, inherited a debt of $140 million and is tasked with mending curatorial fences.

MFA director Jan Fontein first apppointed John Walsh as curator of European Paintings then Theodore E. Stebbins as curator of American Paintings. In this first of our two part coverage Stebbins discusses the M&M Karolik and William H. and Saundra Lane collections. On his watch Stebbins acquired major American, modern and contemporary works. His legacy for the museum and in the field is formidable.

When I interviewed Alan Shestack in 1992 he had been MFA director for five years. It was a time of economic downturn and the museum faced an annual deficit of $3 million. We discussed ways in which the museum might meet this challenge including a relationship with a museum in Nagoya, Japan which it helped to launch and program. He spoke adamantly that selling works to cover costs violated the mission and covenant of museums and their donors.