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Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation
Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA)
By: - Mar 22nd, 2024On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Not long after that, John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) created the bronze sculpture “The Freedman.” It depicts a semi-nude seated figure in the act of his removing shackles. Resembling the iconic Roman “Boxer,” the work was arguably the first bronze sculpture to depict an African American.
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Power of Stillness
Present Moment Awareness
By: - Mar 21st, 2024One exercise I suggest to my students is a “slow by slow” day each week: walk just a little slower than you usually walk; speak just a little slower than you usually speak; eat just a little slower than you usually eat. Not slow motion, and not so anyone else would notice, but slower than usual.
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Doubt Revived by Roundabout Theatre
John Patrick Shanley's Timely Masterpiece
By: - Mar 22nd, 2024Doubt, John Patrick Shanley’s justly celebrated play, is running at the Roundabout Theatre in New York directed by Scott Ellis.
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Escaped Alone at Yale Rep
Signifying Nothing
By: - Mar 22nd, 2024I admit to still being perplexed. It kept reminding me of the Shakespeare lines from MacBeth, which begin “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time;” and ends with “It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, /Signifying nothing.”
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The Hot Wing King
At Hartford Stage
By: - Mar 22nd, 2024It is easy to see why this play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2021. The play is about family, friends and dreams. It is about the challenges we all face in navigating the potential pitfalls in families and the difficulties of new romantic relationships.
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Pooches at the Clark
Walking the Dogs
By: - Mar 18th, 2024On Friday, April 19, the Clark Art Institute offers free activities as part of its April School Vacation Week programming. At 10 am, the Clark hosts Earth Walk with Dogs, offering three walks through its trails, ranging in difficulty. From 11 am–1 pm, the Clark presents a pop-up display of dogs and nature-themed works on paper in the Manton Study Center for Works on Paper, located in the Manton Research Center.
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Erin Go Bragh Yourself
Luck of the Irish
By: - Mar 18th, 2024Once a year I get to celebrate my half Irish heritage with a vengeance. That means corned beef and cabbage and raucous singalong at the Freight Yard Pub in North Adams.
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Berkshire Jazz Festival
Tickets on Sale
By: - Mar 18th, 2024Starting with an open jam session and ending with a jazz brunch at Dottie’s, the events include the popular Jazz Crawl, a swing dance, the jazz prodigy concert introducing two (!) young musicians to Berkshires audiences, and headline concerts featuring Brandon Goldberg and Marcus Roberts. The box office is open, and you can find a link at the end of this newsletter.
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Pipeline
The Dangers of Growing Up Black in America
By: - Mar 18th, 2024In response to provocation, Black private-school-student Omari has crossed a line with his White teacher. The boy's mother, Nya, who is a teacher, is conflicted, as she values the rules that serve to protect society, but she understands that her son is a good boy with a future now in peril. Dominique Morisseau's riveting play explores numerous issues of race and relationships, and African-American Shakespeare's production does the play justice.
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Carnegie Hall Supports Young Musicians
Nezet-Seguin Conducts the National Youth Orchestra of the USA-Alumni
By: - Mar 18th, 2024The National Youth Orchestra-USA Alumni performed works by George Gershwin and Dmitri Shostakovich at Carnegie Hall. Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducted. Daniil Trifonov performed Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with flair, flash and deep feeling.
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Conflating Lovecraft, Mugar and Houellebecq
iterary Sources for an Artist’s Work
By: - Mar 18th, 2024Of course my painting is not in the realm of the noxious monsters of Lovecraft but the eventual push of the visual event off the surface seems to speak to a similar aggressive desire to reach out and engage the viewer. It also begins to abandon the pleasant color field that had dominated my work from the beginning of the millennium.
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The Far Country
Berkeley Rep's Fine Version of a Drama Set in Nearby Environs
By: - Mar 15th, 2024Gee, a Chinese immigrant living in San Francisco, wishes to visit China but needs documentation that will ensure his return. To obtain that, he must undergo interrogation at the notorious Angel Island detention center. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, immigration officials are loathe to facilitate entry and re-entry into the U.S. by Asians, who are crafty in developing strategies to overcome the resistance.
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American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie
Continuingto look at weimar and its Repercussions
By: - Mar 15th, 2024The American Composers Orchestra joined Carnegie Hall’s musical exploration of the Weimar Republic. Central to the evening’s presentation were two pieces: One, ‘Pirate Jenny’ from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. The other ‘Clans’ from Lowok Shoppola of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.
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Mother by Kelsey Shultis at Eclipse Gallery
New Paintings and Works on Paper
By: - Mar 15th, 2024The paintings of Mother explore the diverse aspects of Motherhood, from the Divine Feminine to the Kitchen Witch.
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Dara Haskins at Corridor ’62
When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint Them
By: - Mar 12th, 2024It was energizing to meet the 31-year-old artist, Dara Haskins, who was born in Baltimore and now lives in Philadelphia. We found it impossible to resist her charm and enthusiasm. She was eager to sell me a small painting but I fended off stating that I was there as a critic. Her intent is to raise enough money to return to Cuba where she recently resided for a month.
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Williams Collage Art Museum
Designs for Its Stand Alone Venue
By: - Mar 07th, 2024Prominently located at the western entrance to the Williams College campus and the town, the new Williams College Museum of Art is conceived to serve the College, the local community, and visitors to the Berkshires through a cluster of four program areas. While slightly set apart like pavilions, the better to accommodate their multiple uses, the program areas are unified through their materials, their openness to the natural setting, their organization around a central gathering place, and a distinctive overarching roof that shelters them all.
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The Clark Art Institute Selects Bénédicte Savoy
2024 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing.
By: - Mar 07th, 2024The Clark Art Institute has selected Bénédicte Savoy as the recipient of the 2024 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing. Savoy is a professor of art history at Technische Universität in Berlin and is a noted expert on the provenance and repatriation of works of art, including looted art and other forms of illegally acquired cultural objects.
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Moulin Rouge the Musical
Equity Production in Ft. Lauderdale
By: - Mar 08th, 2024Moulin Rouge the Musical is gorgeous to look at but slight on story An equity national touring production runs through March 17 in Ft. Lauderdale's Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Much of Moulin Rouge carries the celebratory aura of a party.
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Castalian Quartet at the 92nd Street Y
Sir Stephen Hough Pianist and Composer
By: - Mar 12th, 2024The brash and lively Castalian String Quartet and man-for-all-seasons Sir Stephen Hough performed at the Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
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Popular Artists at Tanglewood
New Names Added
By: - Mar 07th, 2024New additions to the Popular Artist Series at the Tanglewood Music Festival bring a parade of classic rock, contemporary pop, and R&B stars to the Koussevitzky Music Shed between June 20 and Independence Day, supplementing several more previously announced dates in July and August. New additions to the Shed lineup include Roger Daltrey with KT Tunstall, Brandi Carlile, and Jon Batiste, as well as John Fogerty and George Thorogood on tour together and Jason Mraz with the Boston Pops conducted by Sean O’Loughlin.
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Grumpy Old Men The Musical
At Seven Angels Theatre
By: - Mar 07th, 2024Most of the humor is of the middle-school-boy type – lots of insults and adolescent sexual innuendo. How much of this you find funny or just too much depends on your sense of humor and how much seeing grown men call each other a variety of offensive words is enjoyable. How many sexual jokes do you want John’s father, who is ninety, to make? For me, it was way overdone.
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Million Dollar Quartet
At ACT-CT
By: - Mar 04th, 2024Hunter Foster, who played Sam Philips in the original Broadway cast, directs this production with a fine hand. His experience with the show reveals itself in the nuances and choices he makes. The scenic design by Josh Smith shows us the studio of Sun Records in Memphis in the 1950s. The founder of the studio, Phillips helped put rock ‘n roll on the charts.
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Blue Heron's Stillness
By: - Mar 03rd, 2024The blue heron, a majestic bird with piercing yellow eyes and a spear-like beak, embodies a unique paradox. It is a creature of both profound stillness and lightning-fast action. But it is the heron’s stillness that truly captivates, a quality that has enthralled artists, writers, and philosophers for centuries. This stillness isn’t just an absence of movement; it’s a potent force, a language of patience, focus, and a deep connection with the environment.
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Mira Cantor Dig
Kingston Gallery
By: - Mar 03rd, 2024In my new paintings I am imagining “evolutants” stuck in the mud, from remains of the flora and fauna of the smallest cell-like creatures to the evolution of our present human form, painted as staggered layers of history. They are colorful, animated patterns of biological and imaginary forms painted in acrylic and oil.
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Swing into Spring
Jazz in the Berkshires
By: - Mar 01st, 2024Spring fast approaches, with good news from our friends at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, and the opening of the box office for our own Pittsfield CityJazz Festival.
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