Fine Arts
-
Hudson River Museum
Show by former CAVS Fellow Ellen Kozak
By: - Jun 01st, 2018Former MIT/CAVS Fellow, Ellen Kozak, and composer Scott D. Miller are presenting a 4-Channel Video Installation at the Hudson River Museum until September 9. The summer exhibition also includes monumental abstract drawings by Christine Hiebert as well as museum owned etchings that are titled: Donald Judd: Variations on a Theme.
-
Schön and Schön: From Generation to Generation
Mother and Daughter Collaborate on Ceramic Sculpture
By: - May 30th, 2018For the first time mother and daughter collaborated to create a large, abstract, ceramic vessel emblazoned with evocative faces. With other works by both artists it resulted in a special exhibition Schön and Schön: From Generation to Generation. It remains on view, through June 28, at the North Hill community complex in Needham, Mass. Nancy Schön, now 89, is renowned for her "Make Way for the Ducklings" bronze sculptures in the Boston Public Gardens. Ellen Schön is the Ceramics Studio Supervisor and an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University College of Art and Design.
-
MIT/CAVS @ MIT Museum
Celebrating 50 Years of CAVS
By: - May 25th, 2018The MIT Museum's current exhibitions include: 'Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies,' until January 31st, 2019 and 'Gyorgy Kepes Photographs II, MIT Years 1946-1985,' until July 15, 2018. This article also highlights the Museum's party in late April, where more than 150 people celebrated with the CAVS community. As always, photographs of artwork and people make words visible and more memorable.
-
Berkshire Museum Plays Bait and Switch
Juried Show Art of the Hills Opens on June 2
By: - May 22nd, 2018On Sunday, June 2, the Berkshire Museum is hosting a festive opening for its summer-long juried exhibition Art of the Hills. Of 230 who applied works by 36 regional artists will be on view. I will not cross picket lines to attend the "celebration." There are no plans for Berkshire Fine Arts to view or review the exhibition.
-
CAVS Fellows Gather to Celebrate
50 Years of Art Science and Technology at MIT
By: - May 18th, 2018The former faculty and fellows of MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies gathered from all over the world for a 50th anniversary exhibition and celebration. There was a lively reception in the ground floor gallery of the MIT Museum which faces MASS Ave in Cambridge. The exhibition continues in galleries above. The museum moved to this more accessible building several years ago. The project also entailed galleries in the Rotunda area of the main building on the MIT campus.
-
Margaret Swan at Boston Sculptors Gallery
A Decades Long Appreciation
By: - May 13th, 2018Margaret Swan is an artist I have followed with much appreciation over decades. Her recent exhibition "Aloft" at Boston Sculptors Gallery was insired by the rigging, spars and sails, of tall ships. With this latest work there is a readily identified thread that reveals the aesthetic DNA of an artist who has been sharply focused through the years. Yet again the reliief pieces of varying scale are pristine in thought and execution.
-
Augmented Reality at Boston Cyberarts Gallery
Examples of Immersive Aesthetic and Sensual Experimentation
By: - May 10th, 2018Known for its cutting-edge and often transformative shows about art and technology, Boston Cyberarts has recently presented two inspired gallery exhibitions as well as unconventional outdoor exhibits presenting examples of augmented reality art.
-
Rick Harlow's The Landscape of Energy
Statent by a Berkshire Artist
By: - May 05th, 2018Through the end of May The Eclipse Mill Gallery launches its 2018 season with the first Berkshire solo show of abstract paintings by resident artist, Rick Harlow. In an artist's statement Harlow provides a context for what he describes as The Landscape of Energy. On May 26 in the gallery at 243 Union Street, North Adams, the group Aluna will create improvised music inspired by the paintings.
-
London’s Fourth Plinth in Central London
The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist Transformative Public Art.
By: - Apr 28th, 2018For the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, Artist Michael Rakowitz has recreated the Lamassu. This winged bull and protective deity guarded the entrance to Nergal Gate of Nineveh (near modern day Mosul) from 700 BC until it was barbarically destroyed by ISIS in 2015. This wonderful reconstruction is made from recycled packaging from 10,500 empty Iraqi date syrup cans. This represents a once-renowned Iraqi industry now decimated by war. The piece's inscription is written in Cuneiform. Rebuilding the Lamassu in Trafalgar Square means it can continue to guard the people who live, visit and work in London. It is a layered artwork full of myth and tragic reality.
-
Berkshire Museum Decision Handed Down
Green Light to Sell Treasures and Gut the Building
By: - Apr 05th, 2018Pittsfield used to have a small, charming, eclectic regional museum. As of today that's no longer true.
-
Renowned Boston Arts Critic David Bonetti
Found Listening to Classical Music
By: - Apr 05th, 2018A Berkshire Fine Arts contributor, the renowned arts critic, David Bonetti, was found dead in his Brookline, Mass. apartment while listening to classical music. His writing career started with Art New England and the Boston Phoenix. He joined the San Francisco Chronicle and then St. Louis Post Dispatch. After that he retired writing the occasional feature on the fine arts. In his final years he wrote on opera for this site. He was widely regarded as one of the best critics of his generation.
-
Public Art at Boston Fenway's Pierce Boston Tower
A Lost Opportunity for Developers, Arquitectonica, and artist Alexandre da Cunha.
By: - Apr 04th, 2018Though somewhat rare in Boston, every attempt at public art is not necessarily a triumph. Unfortunately, the recent commission by Alexandre da Cunha in the Fenway Neighborhood is not great, inspiring or even provocative. Just something to fill a space or a true lost opportunity, the civic and artistic bar needs to be set higher.
-
In the Studio with Rick Harlow
Eclipse Mill Gallery Exhibition Opens May 1
By: - Mar 29th, 2018The landscape, particularly as inspired by visionary experiences with the indigenous people of Colombia, have long been key to the large paintings of Rick Harlow. In the past couple of years, taking off from the radical technique of Jackson Pollock, nature has been a more subliminal signifier in dripped and spattered abstract paintings. During a studio visit we discussed the dozen paintings to be included in "Landscape of Energy" at the Eclipse Mill Gallery. It will be his first Berkshire solo show.
-
CAVS/MIT @ 50
The MIT Museum Exhibitions
By: - Mar 09th, 2018Gyorgy Kepes opened in 1967 the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT and it was officially inaugurated in 1968. An ardent proponent of collaborations between the arts, sciences and technology MIT was the right place to start such a Center. Since then, a number of museums, organizations and academic centers with similar mandates are flourishing in North America and Europe. Here's just an overview of work that was created at CAVS during 40 years of its existence. The program Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) has taken on the mantle at MIT of interdisciplinary work in the 21st Century.
-
David Ricci’s Edge of Chaos
Studio Visit with a Berkshire Photographer
By: - Feb 14th, 2018For the past year the Berkshire based photographer, David Ricci, has been working on a large format, expensive and ambitious book. It has a working title of Edge of Chaos and surveys four decades of his oeuvre. During a studio visit we viewed the work and how it is evolving into a publication.
-
Berkshire Museum Will Gut Its Collection
Matter to be Settled with Supreme Judicial Court
By: - Feb 10th, 2018A compromise is a deal that neither side is happy with. Other than a few hard fought concessions the Berkshire Museum will now gut the museum and its collection in pursuit of its vulgarian, populist New Vision. It's tarnished leadership, including director, Van Shields and board president, Elizabeth McGraw, will have a tough job earning back the trust and support of a community which they so adroitly alienated.
-
David Hockney's California Dreaming
Subdued Met Retrospective of a Pioneer of Pop
By: - Jan 31st, 2018While described as a retrospective in eight galleries with just 60 paintings, 21 portrait drawings and five of his ground-breaking “Joiner” photo collages the David Hockney exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a bit of a tease. Now 80 when Hockney depicted homosexuality during the 1960s it was still illegal in Great Britain. He left for the laid back lifesyle of LA in 1964 and now commutes between continents. The exhibition is on view through February 25.
-
Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed
Riveting Selection of 43 Works at Met Breuer
By: - Jan 29th, 2018With just 43 works Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed at Met Breuer through February 4 provides a small but succinct view of his work. He was a prolific artist, creating approximately 1,750 paintings, 18,000 prints, and 4,500 watercolors, in addition to sculpture, graphic art, theater design, and photography. More than half of the works on view were part of Munch's personal collection and remained with him throughout his life.
-
Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World
Controversial Traveling Retrospective
By: - Jan 27th, 2018In 1993 I was intrigued by ersatz weapons fabricated from funky materials by Jimmie Durham in the Whitney Biennial. To explore creative freedom the artist left America in 1987 never to return. While acquiring a global reputation it is only now that the work is again being seen and debated in the States. A long overdue retrospective "Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World" organized by the Hammer Museum traveled to the Walker Arts Center and is finishing its run at the Whitney Museum. It states a case for Durham as one of the formost American artists of his generation.
-
Broadway in Winter
Museums by Day and Theatre at Night
By: - Jan 25th, 2018The motive was not to miss a once- in-a-lifetime exhibition Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It remains on view through February 12. In addition to visiting museums by day we enjoyed four nights on Broadway. During the Big Chill we avoided threeh our holiday lines at the Met. There was easy access and a good selection for half price TKTS in Times Square.
-
The Pioneering 1960s Art of USCO
Looking Back at Early Art and Technology
By: - Jan 14th, 2018When an opportunity to celebrate USCO’s pioneering work came along, I just had to curate it. This acknowledgement of our cultural past, still clearly resonates in our 21st Century present.
-
Vermont’s Eclectic Shelburne Museum
How Sweet It Is
By: - Jan 12th, 2018Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960) founded the Shelburne Museum which has 150,000 objects and 39 buildings on 45 acres. Her father Henry Osborne Havemeyer was known as The Sugar King. With his wife Louisne they created a vast collection donating 2,000 objects, including French Impressionist masterpieces, to the Met. Electra married polo champion James Watson Webb II of the Vanderbilt family. Well before the controversies of the Berkshire Museum, in 1996, the Shelburne Museum sold $30 million of its art to pay expenses. During the winter just five buildings are open. We viewed two special exhibitions in the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education which opened in 2013. It was a lively and intriguing experience.
-
The Jewel Of The Douro Valley
Since 1880 Ramos Pinto Has Produced Port
By: - Jan 07th, 2018The Ramos Pinto brothers founded Ramos Pinto in 1880 and marketed the port wine producing company to Brazilians. They commissioned remarkable artworks illustrating their products and guerilla marketing practices. Today, the posters are iconic and the new owners, Champagne Roederer, have been following in the footsteps of Antonio and Adriano Ramos Pinto.
-
A Study in Contrast Two Museums in Lisbon
National Tile Museum and MAAT Bookend Art and Culture
By: - Dec 30th, 2017These institutions visually and physically reflected Portuguese art and culture, one embracing the nooks and crannies of history while the other exhibited a vibrant openness to contemporary urbanity.
-
Berkshire Museum Top Arts Story of 2017
Coverage Morphed from Local to National News
By: - Dec 26th, 2017A decision on an appeal by Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, to halt the sale of 40 key works of art at Sothebys on behalf of the Berkshire Museum will be decided by the end of January. Van Shields, now on medical leave as director of the museum, and board president, Elizabeth "Buzz" McGraw, announced their $60 million plans for a New Vision in July. What started as a local story has morphed into national and global coverage. The outcome of this unethical attempt at deaccessioning by a pariah museum may have a game changing impact on the mandate of all American museums' commitment to preserve and conserve collections for future generations.
<< Previous Next >>