Museum of Fine Arts

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.

MFA director Jan Fontein appointed Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. as John Moors Cabot Curator of American Art. For three years he was also head of the departments of American and European painting as well as the department of 20th century art. He acquired 600 works for the museum including 100 from the Lane Collection of American modernism. In terms of acquisitions and exhibitions few curators compare to his impact on the museum. \

On April 14, 2020 Alan Shestack passed away at 81. From 1987 to 1993 he was director of the Museum of Fine Arts. He was notable as a mediator and problem solver. As director he presided over 26 departments with an uneven distribution of resources and power. This interview took place not long after he arrived at the museum.

At 83 the reowned portrait photographer, Elsa Dorfman, passed away at home in the People's Republic of Cambridge. As a young women she worked for Grove Press in New York. There she met many writers including Allen Ginsberg who became a lifelong subject and friend. I included her in exhibitions and wrote about her for Art News.

In 1983 the Museum of FIne Art organized a traveling exhibition A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting: 1760-1910. It toured the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Grand Palais in Paris, as well as being shown at the MFA. Artists and members of Boston's African American community protested that the exhibition did not include artists of color. In this 1984 interview former MFA director, Jan Fontein, discussed negotiatons to include the 19th century artist Henry Osawa Tanner. We also covered gaps in 20th century European and American art.

Because of the Raphael Incident, Perry T. Rathbone. was forced out as director of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1970. The board president, George Seybolt, who ousted Rathbone, then passed over acting director, Classical curator, Cornelius Vermeule, to unilaterally appoint a dark horse candidate, Merrill Rueppel. That ended with a curatorial coup from which Asiatic curator, Jan Fontein, emerged as acting director in 1975. He calmed troubled waters and acccomplished much through 1987. From April 1983, this is the first of two transcribed interviews.

There were incidents of racism when a school group visited the Museum of Fine Arts on May 16, 2019. Attorney General Maura Healey has negotiated an agreement between the Museum of Fine Arts and Boston’s Helen Y. David Leadership Academy. The settlment comes with an apology as well as a commitment of $500,000 to address issues of racism

To mark the beginning of another month in this surreal and uncertain time, Gallery NAGA will present the third solo exhibition of glowing, ephemeral paintings by Nicole Chesney and luscious, Irish landscapes on paper by Rick Fox.

The status of the Italian poet, essayist and gallerist, Mario Diacono, is legendary. To be with his wife Claudette, a native of Lynn, Mass, he moved to Boston and opened a gallery in 1985. He was renowned for showing a single work for which he wrote scholarly essays. Then relatively affordable he made few Boston sales of the now renowned artists he exhibited. The Museum of Fine Arts bought a Ross Bleckner painting and appropriation by Sherrie Levine. Most of the work was acquired by the Italian collector Achille Maramotti. Today Diacono is a curator for Collezione Maramotti.

From 1987 to 1993 Alan Shestack was director of the Museum of Fine Arts. He followed Jan Fontein who was director from 1975 to 1987.

Shortly after the exhibition Words & Images Allan Rohan Crite 1910 – 2007 opened the private St. Botolph Club was closed because of the pandemic. There is however a link to a video that provides a virtual tour of the exhibition. Crite is regarded as a leading Boston artist of his generation. He was a graduate of the Museum School. The Museum of Fine Arts is remiss in not planning a major exhibition of this remarkable and widely influential artist.

A native of Toronto, Matthew Teitelbaum, departed Boston in 1993 to take a curatorial position at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In this interview he was acting director of the Institute of Contemporary Art. Then 37, it provides insights of his curatorial vision and process. He went on to be director of the AGO. In 2015 he returned to Boston as director of the Museum of Fine Arts.