Boston Globe

On June 5 at The Mount in Lenox, Mass. the publisher/ editor of Berkshire Fine Arts, Charles Giuliano, will launch Shards of a Life. From 5:30 to 7:30 PM on the porch there will be a reception and reading. In 1970 Giuliano coined and was the first to publish the now common word gonzo. The book of poems continues his development of the unique gonzo style.

The book of poetry Shards of a Life by Charles Giuliano will be launched with a reading and book signing at Edith Wharton's The Mount. The free reception will will occur on Friday, June 5 from 5:30 to 7:30. The critical essay "Beyond Gonzo" was written as the introduction for the book by J.M. Robert Henriquez

Now in his final weeks as director of the Clark Art Institute Michael Conforti hosted a media event promoting a blockbuster season for Northern Berkshire County. There were presentations by Joe Thompson for Mass MoCA, Tina Olsen for the Williams College Museum of Art, and Mandy Greenfield for the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Notably absent from the media event were North Adams based arts presenters Downstreet, The Eclipse Mill Gallery, The Rudd Museum of Art and the fall annual Williamstown Film Festival.

In 2009 Michael Rush, then the director of the Rose Art Museum, took the fall when Brandeis University schemed to close the museum and sell its $350 million collection. In 2010 he became the founding director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. He died recently at 65.

Tony Simotes was summarily ousted from Shakespeare & Company when he got on the wrong side with a micro managing now former board president Sarah Hancock. Significantly, she is a close friend of founding artistic director, Tina Packer, whose vision of the company was very different from Simotes who replaced her. Rick Dildine who was brought in with a mandate for change soon realized the chain of command and hastily departed. In a matter of months the company went from plan B to plan C. When we met with Simotes for a long lunch he was not inclined to sort out those loose ends. He is upbeat about new possibilities as second in command to Kate Maguire and the richly enhanced Berkshire Theatre Group.

Belinda Rathbone, daughter of Perry Rathbone, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1955 to 1972, discusses her book The Boston Raphael: A Mysterious Painting, an Embattled Museum in an Era of Change, and a Daughter’s Search for the Truth at the Clark Art Institute on Sunday, April 26 at 3 pm.

Recently Kenworth Moffett posted a succinct account of his theoretical views and tenure as founding curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine arts. This is part one of a followup interview with Moffett. Here we explore his education at Columbia and Harvard as well as a unique relationship with Clement Greenberg the leading critic of his generation.

In this installment of an extensive interview the pratfalls of modern and contemporary art in Boston are explored. It was a peripheral topic in Belinda Rathbone's biography of her father, former MFA director, Perry T. Rathbone.

The Boston Raphael is the first major book on the Museum of Fine Arts since Walter Muir Whitehill's centennial history in 1970. This is part one of an in dept interview with biographer Belinda Rathbone about the New York Times best selling profile of her father, former MFA director, Perry T. Rathbone.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York will close the ZERO exhibition on January 7, 2015. It is a comprehensive survey, highlighting more than 40 artists from 10 countries in Europe, South America and Japan. They were members of major artist groups and developments post WWII during the 1950s - 1960s.The second part of this article is dedicated to Otto Piene at CAVS/ MIT - and all who came to work or knew him and The Center.

Yesterday's lively press conference at Mass MoCA, announcing the $54.4 million Confluence Campaign, was preempted by a news leak of an embargoed press release by Geoff Edgers of the Washington Post. While that story provided a tantalizing overview the press conference covered many of the complex and exciting details. This updates our prior reports with more to follow.

Completing a $145 million renovation and expansion the Clark Art Institute repoened this summer. The occasion was launched with a stunning range of special exhibitions. During a recent opening of Magna Carta we asked the museum's fast moving director, Michael Conforti, for an overview of the season and when we might expect to see Treasures from the Prado?

Twelve days after breaking news the New York Times has reported on $25.4 million in Commonwealth funding for the $50 million renovation of the final phase of build out for Mass MoCA. While damning the museum with faint praise the Times drags up an eight year old controversy of a botched installation by Christoph Buchel. The reporter probed far and wide for on and off the record smears of the museum and its critical reputation.

The artist Jim Hodges came to New York in the 1980s at a time when AIDS was decimating the arts community. Like others of his generation his work responded to a sense of devastation and loss. A retrospecitve of his eclectic conceptual work is on view at Boston's ICA until September 1.

Popular contemporary company Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival for the first time since 2010, bringing a sensational mixed-bill program. Directed by Glenn Edgerton, the 18-member company performs the dramatic Mediterranean-inspired Gnawa, choreographed by Nacho Duato, and Jiří Kylián’s vivid Falling Angels, a stark all-female work danced to “Drumming” by contemporary composer Steve Reich.

A bold company with a strong Jacob’s Pillow history including five engagements since 2005, Trey McIntyre Project will make its final appearance as a fulltime dance ensemble June 25-29 in the Ted Shawn Theatre. In addition there are a number of free events as the season commences in Becket

If you do a Google search the late Bill Cardoso comes up as having coined the term gonzo and dubbing Hunter Thompson's style of writing as Gonzo Journalism. Other than that he is largely forgotten as one of the outrageous characters and original thinkers of his era. Recently I read his out of print book The Maltese Sangweech a collection of magazine pieces. It includes two masterpieces of gonzo journalism "The San Francisco Red Sox" and "Zaire"an account of the Ali vs. Forman rumble in the jungle./

Barrington Stage Company announces four new Associate Artists, all of whom are working at Barrington Stage in 2014 – casting director Pat McCorkle, lighting designer Scott Pinkney, scenic designer Brian Prather, and press director Charlie Siedenburg.

Nashville is rightly known as The Music City. Since 2001, with the opening of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in a former art deco post office the city is also a regional destination for world class art exhibitions. Meeting with museum staff we discussed how a non collecting institution, a kunsthalle, manages to leverage major loans and traveling exhibitions. Primarily this is done by original scholarly work and publications as well as building relationships with partnering museums.

After three years with eleven museums on three continents the treasures of the Clark Art Institute are back home safe and sound. They will be seen this summer when the museum reopens after extensive renovation and expansion on July 4. This grand tour of major museums will reap benefits as the Clark requests loans for major exhibitions. Other major museums, however, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the Guggenheim, have loaned works to their satellites and commercial exhibition promoters for cold cash.

Huntington Theatre Company announces six productions of its 2014-2015 Season plus one additional title. Continuing its 32-year tradition, the Huntington will present world-class productions of new works and classics made current created by the finest local and national talent. The varied lineup includes a Tony Award-winning Broadway comedy, a thrilling new play set in Boston, a new play by a celebrated local writer that riffs on a beloved classic, a revival of a provocative comedy, a classic American drama, and a topical new play directed by Huntington Artistic Director Peter DuBois, plus the return of visionary director David Cromer (Our Town).

David Bonetti started a career as an art critic writing for the Boston Phoenix and Art New England. He moved on to write for daily papers in San Francisco and St. Louis. Now retired from covering fine arts he has returned to Boston. For the past few years he has covered opera for Berkshire Fine Arts with the occasional art piece. In response to our coverage of the retirement of MFA director, Malcolm Rogers, in a letter to the editor he offered a different take. We post it as an op ed piece.

The MFA today has been totally rebuilt and defined by Malcolm Rogers. He is resigning after 19 years of dramatic and event brutal change. Part of that transformation is a not so benign neglect of more than a century of institutional and cultural history. The story of the resignation of Rogers was written under pressure of deadline. Since then further research has clarified points raised in the article. More will follow.

By just two years over Perry T. Rathbone, at 19, the British born Malcolm Rogers is leaving the Museum of Fine Arts as its longest running, most successful and controversial director. From top to bottom he reformed, renovated and rebuilt ever aspect of the museum. Along the way playing a hardball game of croquet worthy of the Queen of Hearts.

MASS MoCA's 2012 exhibition of Oh Canada "Art from North North America," is hitting the road. The expansive exhibition, which includes more than 100 works by over 60 artists, will travel to multiple venues across Canada. The exhibition will show in a multi-venue format, on view in The Maritimes from June 27, 2014, through September 21, 2014, and in Calgary from January 31, 2015 through April 26, 2015.