David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History represents a landmark moment in American art: the first major exhibition of David Driskell’s remarkable career as a painter. The exhibition is featured at Maine's Portland Museum of Art through September 12.

On June 13 in 1870, a train arrived in North Adams with 75 young men from China hired to replace striking shoe workers. Over 2,000 people watched as the men walked to the factory under police escort. The crowd was hostile, but there was no violence. The Chinese proved to be both cheaper and more efficient than the union shoe workers they replaced.

In this new book of color photographs, all shot in 1981, Allen Frame attempts to revisit a zeitgeist that had given rise to an aesthetic that was distinctly New York. The distinctiveness was related to a circle of friends, many – though not all of them - gay men, who were making art at a specific moment in New York’s history.  FEVER is Frame’s personal documentary of that time, before the deepening tragedy of AIDS that would claim the lives of many of the young artists pictured in this book.

Opera Saratoga announces the company’s return to the stage for its 60th Anniversary with a season of performances inspired by the iconic novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Working closely with a team of medical professionals and a dedicated COVID Safety Officer, Opera Saratoga is committed to bringing audiences and artists together safely for the 2021 Summer Festival, which will be produced outdoors during June and July in partnership with the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), Saratoga Spa State Park, and Pitney Meadows Community Farm to provide three unique performance spaces for audiences to safely enjoy two fully staged productions and a special concert.

Nancy Rhodes, founder and artistic director of Encompass New Opera Theatre, led a Zoom for an international audience of teachers. Rhodes formed Encompass just as the women’s movement was blossoming. There are special women in the American music world who have soldiered on in their professions, whatever complications were created by gender.  Bursting onto the scene at about the same time as Gloria Steinem, Nancy Rhodes created an innovative company.. 

There is a new pop-up gallery, Poker Flats, in Williamstown. There will be a public opening reception Saturday June 26  4-6pm.

Erika Marquardt was an extraordinary woman, painter and artist. We were dear friends and I have followed her and Susan Erony's work since 1995. The rare collaboration between those two painters of more than 1000 small paintings ( 7"x10") lasted from 1998 to 2006. And they also collaborated on a large triptych. Altogether an amazing feat!

As summer temperatures rise Melting Point is the theme of a collaboration between Ferrin Contemporary in the Berkshires and Heller Gallery in Manhattan. The group exhibition of glass and ceramic artists entails use of the melting point as central to their practice.

Berlin Philharmonic had its big season finale in Waldbühne Stadium, Olympic Park, Berlin. Gershwin, Bernstein and John Williams were featured on a program re-introducing the Berlin Philharmonic live and to their live audience. Wayne Marshall conducted, and performed the Rhapsody in Blue. Martin Grobinger,  a  percussionist, was featured in a John Williams’ The Special Edition.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC) announces extensions for the first four productions of the theatre’s 2021 season: Who Could Ask for Anything More? The Songs of George Gershwin, Chester Bailey, Eleanor and Boca.

The Al Hirschfeld Foundation's latest online exhibition focuses on canines. The show features drawings of some of the most famous dogs in 20th century media. The drawings of Al Hirschfeld stand as one of the most innovative efforts in establishing the visual language of modern art through caricature in the 20th century.

In an earlier version of Tennessee Rising, presented at the 2017 United Solo Festival in New York City, Jacob Storms received an award for the Best One-Man show. The following year, fast-travelling word of mouth got him a headlining gig at the Saint Louis’ Tennessee Williams Festival. This current version, directed by Alan Cumming, was originally scheduled to premiere at the Beaubourg Theatre in New Orleans in March 2020.

Berkshires Jazz is delighted to be jumping back into ‘live’ programming with six events in the second half of 2021, including three in August. It is the most ambitious schedule in our 17-year history, and reflects our confidence that there is a pent-up demand for in-person jazz events. 

If you know Pearl Bailey’s work, the show by Rashidra Scott will let you enjoy not only the music but her wisdom and if you don’t know about her, you will discover this terrific entertainer.

A major exhibition of portrait painting spanning the decades between 1512-1570, seems to me a risky proposition. A great idea for scholars, students and serious amateurs of art history, but usually not a show that would attract the general public. This one is different, thanks in part to a first-rate installation by Daniel Kershaw, the Met’s senior exhibition designer. 

The online-only theater company New Normal Rep scores another hit with its riveting production of Nikkole Salter's riveting drama, "Lines in the Dust." The production is streaming on demand through Aug. 8. The play centers on a poor, single mother who commits residency fraud in an effort to give her daughter the best possible education. "Lines in the Dust" takes place in New Jersey in 2009-2010.

The Hudson Eye, arranged by curator Aaron Levi Garvey, presented by Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation commences August 27th - September 6th, 2021, timed throughout Labor Day Weekend in historic downtown Hudson, NY. The Hudson Eye curatorially frames 26 participating artists with performances, exhibitions, and a Hot Topics humanities symposium co-organized by Operation Unite NY confronting nine issues spanning global topics at a local level.

Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, examines the continuing influence that master print maker Albrecht Dürer has had on generations of artists who have drawn inspiration from his incomparable body of work. This lecture will be presented live over Zoom and Facebook Live at 6 pm.    

Our visionary founder, Lola Jaffe, passed away on July 7, 2021. In 2002, Lola looked at a threatened and neglected historic theater and saw beauty, transcendent performances, transported audiences, and one show following straight on the heels of the next in perpetuity. Then she started calling her friends to help her make it happen.

The Munich Opera House may not be the house that Wagner built, but it was an important venue in his career, a place where he conducted, and where his works were premiered.  King Ludwig II insisted that the first two episodes of the Ring premiere here. Wagner had hoped to withhold them for his new Festival Theatre at Bayreuth.  Tannhäuser, whose 2017 production in being reprised in Munich’s annual festival, was an immediate favorite of Ludwig, Wagner’s sponsor and savior. 

The very mention of the New York City’s own wildly popular actress and comedian Jackie Hoffman – she of 1000 facial expressions, bodily quirks, a score of well-placed adlibs, and a mesmerizing voice that takes you prisoner with a waterfall of precisely enunciated words – signals that somewhere lurking around a corner is yet another not-to-missed Hoffman Happening.

Real Eyes Gallery in Adams is regarded by artists as one of the best gallery spaces in the Berkshires. The ample venue is well suited to showcase the colossal representational/ conceptual watercolors of Robert Morgan. His work is featured during August with the theme of Out of Context.

Award-winning South Florida actress Elena Maria Garcia will mount her hilarious, one-performer show for a third time. ¡FUÁCATA! or A Latina’s Guide to Surviving the Universe features more than 20 characters, mostly Hispanic women. ¡FUÁCATA in English basically means a backhanded slap.

The stunning matinee production of the monologue Becoming Othello: a Black Girl’s Journey at Shakespeare &Co. this July is set outside in the Roman Garden Theater. On a broiling hot summer day the air rippled with energy as the tall, imposing actor who wrote and conceived of the play, the award-winning Debra Ann Byrd, opened with a chaotic scene at a difficult time of her life, when options seemed blocked and things were not working out for her personally or professionally.

The Harvard Art Museums reopens to the public on Saturday, September 4, 2021. Advance reservations will be required for visitors and will be available up to three weeks in advance. Reservations can be made on the museum website beginning August 20. A limited number of tickets may also be available each day to walk-in visitors. In conjunction with the reopening plans, the museums are also pleased to announce a new “Free Sundays” initiative. The museums will offer preview days for members and supporters on Thursday and Friday, September 2–3, before opening to the general public on September 4.