On the cusp of WWII David Smith created a series of fifteen, dinner plate scaled, bronze relief sculptures. A gift from his estate fourteen bronzes and one on extended loan have been donated to the Harvard Art Museums. There is irony that Medals of Dishonor are displayed on a campus engulfed in responses to inappropriate remarks by its President, Dr Claudine Gay, before Congress. Under pressure she has resigned. Because of war, and atrocities on both sides in Israel and Gaza, both Jewish and Islamic students proclaim that they do not feel safe on college campuses.

The film Maestro reminds us that classical music can be accessible to a wide audience. This is not because the film makes the music accessible. In fact, Bradley Cooper conducting is a bad joke. You wonder what Yannick  Nezet-Seguin, credited with teaching the actor to conduct, was doing.

Plagiarism has been very much in the news.  Even the recent president of Harvard has been under the gun. And yet there seems to be no firm guidelines to instruct non-academics and even academics as to how to spot evidence of plagiarism.  What follows is a meditation on plagiarism and how to avoid it.

Elle, a shallow but genuine and smart fashionista obsessed with the color pink, is dumped by her status seeking boyfriend who is off to Harvard Law School. Surprisingly (and true, except the law school was Stanford in real life), Elle insinuates an acceptance as well. Her presence provides humorous contrast to the staid environment.

Doomed by progeria, a condition that ages the carrier at 4 1/2 times the normal rate, Kimberly turns 16. Her chronological age corresponds to age 72 given this condition, meaning that she probably has little time left in her life. Nonetheless, she attends to daily activities like any other school kid. But her working class parents are loose cannons, and a grifter aunt who insinuates herself into the household develops a get-rich-quick scheme that is anything but normal.

The Dahls raised their children in the "Christian way," and Christmas homecoming celebrated by food and song is a great family tradition. But as adults the four offspring have deviated from the parents' hopes - among them a lesbian, a pathological believer, a recovering addict, and a lost sheep. When singing together, they seem the idyllic family, but when the music stops, the fractures appear. Despite the holiday setting, this is not a Christmas play.

With great sorrow, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announces the death of its beloved Music Director Laureate, Seiji Ozawa. The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s longest-serving conductor, holding the title of Music Director for 29 years (1973–2002), Maestro Ozawa died February 6, 2024, in Tokyo. He was 88 years old.

Harry Bartnick is a realist painter whose modernist aesthetic is deeply rooted in traditions of classicism. He refreshes and refines his vision through annual visits to Europe particularly the ruins of Italy. In recent years that has evolved into aerial depictions of nature ravaged by industrial and residential development. While framed as environmental commentary the works have an uncanny beauty that evoke a range of responses. Following a template, the artist has launched a website for his extensive and unique oeuvre.

Barrington Stage Company’s Black Voices Matter Program is proud to present “Black History: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future” on Monday, February 26 at 6:00pm at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center (36 Linden St.)  

The Boston Pops’ 138th season opens on May 10 and 11 with one of the great entertainers of our time, Harry Connick Jr., singing American Songbook classics. Returning to the Pops for the first time since 2001, Connick performs in what will be the 35th anniversary year of the release of the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack that earned him his first Grammy Award and went multi-platinum. He joins Maestro Lockhart, who is in his 29th year leading the Pops, making him its second longest-serving conductor since the Pops was founded in 1885, after Arthur Fiedler. 

The playwright points out that sanitation people often feel “invisible” to the people whose garbage they pick up. In the same way, both Marlowe and Danny feel they have become invisible.

In conjunction with the 160th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will present newly commissioned and recent works by Sadie Barnette, Alfred Conteh, Maya Freelon, Hugh Hayden, Letitia Huckaby, Jeffrey Meris, and Sable Elyse Smith in a new exhibition visualizing Black freedom, agency, and the legacy of the Civil War today and beyond.

Berkshire Opera Festival  (BOF) announces its 2024 season in Great Barrington, MA and New York City. The only company of its kind in the Berkshire region, BOF produces opera at the highest level under the vision of esteemed co-founders Brian Garman (Artistic Director) and Jonathan Loy ((Director of Production).

Percy MacKaye’s 1922 poem, Dogtown Common, is a beloved document of Gloucester lore. It tells the story of two legendary figures, Tammy Younger and her niece Judy Rhines, shunned for practicing witchcraft. It was inspired by Charles Mann’s 1906, The Story of Dogtown or In the Heart of Cape Ann, that compiles recollections about the outsiders, berry-pickers, subsistence farms and self-proclaimed witches that inhabited Dogtown after it was abandoned in the early 1800s.

First Friday, March 1, 5 - 8:30pm, will feature the reception & artist talks at Boston Sculptors in the South End. Works by Ed Andrews and Leslie Wilcox will be on view through March 31. There will be artist talks on Saturday March 16 from 2-5 PM.

Redwood, a musical drama conceived and written by Tina Landau and Idina Menzel, is currently playing at the La Jolla Playhouse.  Composer Kate Diaz provides the expansive score with lyrics by Diaz and Landau.  Redwood tells the story of Jesse (played by Idina Menzel), a hard-charging, no-holds-barred New Yorker who is struggling to find purpose in her life following the death of her young adult son. 

Most 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.

New 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.

Of 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. 

Get ready to embark on a whimsical journey through the world of cartoons and illustrations as Bernay Fine Art presents ARToons. This vibrant exhibition promises to enchant both the young and the young at heart.

With minimal marketing and fanfare the Cape Ann Museum launches its 2024 season with the special exhibition In the Round: 20th Century Cape Ann Sculpture which opens April 6 from 3 to 5 pm. It focuses on major sculptors who lived and worked on Cape Ann. In July there will be a survey of women artists. The museum has pulled back to business as usual following last summer's blockbuster Edward Hopper and Jo Nivison exhibition in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The Davis Museum at Wellesley College is proud to announce the third iteration of the biennial Prilla Smith Brackett Award. This biennial award honors an outstanding female-identifying visual artist based in the Greater Boston area. Funded by Prilla Smith Brackett (Wellesley Class of 1964) and administered by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Brackett Award will be given to the artist whose work demonstrates extraordinary artistic vision, talent, and skill. The award winner will be announced in Fall 2024.  

Six play finalists are in the running for a major national annual award presented by theater critics. The American Theatre Critics Association annually presents the 2024 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New play Award. The winner will be announced in May.

The Future Lab (s) Gallery, 43 Eagle Street, in North Adams, Massachusetts, is currently inviting to the closing event of their 'Glow Ocean' exhibition on Friday, March 27, from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will be open one final time on Saturday, 3/28, from 1-3 p.m, so that protesters from North Adams and other visitors can still experience this immersive glow show. The 3rd NO KINGS DAY! is happening in all 50 Sates of the USA on Saturday, March 28, 2026

Palm Beach Dramaworks delivers an award-worthy production of "Death of a Salesman." The company's mounting of Arthur Miller's masterpiece runs through April 20.