The Clark Art Institute announces its fall/winter 2021 exhibition schedule featuring two new exhibitions. Competing Currents: 20th-Century Japanese Prints explores two parallel Japanese print-making movements through the Clark’s collection of shin-hanga and s?saku-hanga works while Hue & Cry: French Printmaking and the Debate Over Colors explores the surprising but steady opposition to printed color over the nineteenth century in France. The yearlong exhibition Erin Shirreff: Remainders is on view through January 2, 2022. 

A resident of Western Massachusetts, Morgan Bulkeley was the subject of a retrospective at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. His career began as a seminal artist of the Boston scene. His exhibition at Yezerski Gallery remains on view through October 15.

Inspired by the light and wonder of fireflies, 16 Boston Sculptors Gallery artists have been invited to exhibit their site-specific sculptural works on the grounds of the Manship Artists Residency + Studios (MARS) in Gloucester, MA. Paul Manship, celebrated sculptor of the Prometheus Fountain in New York City’s Rockefeller Center, established his summer residence and studio amid Cape Ann’s granite quarries.

Angela’s Ashes, a musical based on Frank McCourt’s fictionalized memoir of his early family life, is presented now in its musical version by Irish Repertory Theatre.  It is a conventional musical. Yet the memoir’s conventionality did not diminish the story’s deep resonance not only with immigrants, but with all readers who have experienced difficult childhoods. 

This new book by Jerry Olejniczak is filled with images of sites demolished, transformed by decay, and sometimes overtaken by nature. Olejniczak (pronounced Oh-lay-KNEE-chalk) is an urbex photographer—a photographer as urban explorer.

The annual Ojai Music Festival is arguably the most exciting music event in this country.  It “monitors the everchanging mood and directions of our musical atmosphere.” A challenge to be sure. A challenge which is richly met and then some.

Theater for the New City, Executive Director Crystal Field presents Andrea Fulton's Was it Me? Directed by Kymbali Craig, the play gives us a poignant peak into everyday life. Fulton probes the anguish of a woman burdened by an unresolved memory of a traumatizing assault in her childhood. Fulton brings the question of self blame to the fore as the woman asks:  “Was it something about me that made this happen?"

John Adams writes about his release from the shackles binding  him as a Northeastern composer in the US.  Coming to California as a young man, he was at last able to write the music he heard, whatever shape it took.  He was free to be an individual. Each of the young composers featured prominently in Ojai 2021 has clearly benefited from Adams’ experience.

The Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) announces that Kristy Edmunds has been appointed as its new Director, following a 10-month international search and a unanimous decision by the Board. Edmunds comes to MASS MoCA from UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA), where she has served as the Executive and Artistic Director since 2011.

Carolyn Newberger is a Berkshire based polymath. From October 1 through 31 she will exhibit Drawing From Life:  The Nude as Mirror and Muse at Boston's Galatea Fine Arts. "Typically working in broad strokes on paper with watercolor and charcoal or ink, in twenty minutes or less I seek to bring onto the page the ineffable personhood of the model, his or her thoughtfulness, mental state, humor and distinctiveness," she says of this new work.

In "Wood Play" both artists are having fun with the materials and the forms. The work in this exhibition evokes that joy. Steve Muller's assembled sculptures play with sticks/lines, broken, abrupt, and jagged. They are simple intelligent collages, with a touch of wry humor. Jared Abner discovers forms by following the shapes and grain of the wood he is carving.

Cleo Parker Robinson is celebrating the 51st anniversary of the founding of her dance troupe. Covid buried the 50th. This celebration had added sizzle.  Live dance is happening at last.

The Clark Art Institute’s popular First Sundays Free program returns on Sunday, October 3. Admission to the galleries is free to all visitors for the entire day, but advance registration is strongly recommended.

The Gateways Inn in downtown Lenox has announced a new jazz series, starting in October and running Thursdays through Saturdays, with a special concert on Sunday, Oct. 24. Presented in association with Berkshires Jazz, Inc., the series underscores the venue’s ongoing dedication to live music.

It’s been almost a year since November 2020 when Mr. Trump lost his presidential reelection bid but secretly refuses to accept his defeat.  And “the big lie’ theory continues to poison the political well being of the nation.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery had a long and personal relationship with George Wein and we remember and celebrate his kindness and spirit. In a recent letter to Michael Rosenfeld on the occasion of the gallery’s 30th anniversary, he wrote: “30 plus years ago, by chance I walked into a brownstone building on the Upper East Side. There was a sign outside that said: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. That was the day I met you. And to say it changed my life, is putting it mildly.”

In the playbill for Hang by Debbie Tucker Green, the setting is described as ‘Nearly now.’ How prescient the playwright is, to recognize old and new layers of fascism, terribly becoming everyday.

Little Girl, a 2020 documentary about a young French trans girl, would be a good introduction to what it means to feel you were born in the wrong body. It’s an exquisite film, a sweet story of 7-year-old Sasha, who lives in rural France with her incredibly devoted and supportive family. Unfortunately, not everyone around her is equally as understanding.

Experience the beauty and splendor of Edith Wharton’s beloved estate. The Mount is currently open Wednesday – Sunday for tours. We are open on Saturdays and Sundays in November & December. See the mansion all dressed up for the Holidays! Holiday House tours start November 27. Tours can be booked online at EdithWharton.org. Please visit our website for the latest calendar of events.  

What startet 1930 as the first opera cooperation between the playwright Bertolt Brecht and the composer Kurt Weill may well turn out to be the last big opera in the 2021/22 season. Mahagonny is being presented at the Komische Oper Berlin with Barrie Kosky as director. 

With “Lizard Boy,” youth is served and age is respected.  This is a big tent musical that will please anyone with an open mind and a caring heart.  The auteur, Justin Huertas who wrote the book, music, and lyrics, and who plays the lead role, has fashioned an absolutely riveting theater piece that pulsates with emotion and extracts enormous empathy.

This is Wataru Iwata emailing from Japan. I’ve been working as a pianist, music composer, visual artist and recently putting more time into digital art.  

The Rose Art Museum named Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (b. 1954, Cheyenne/Arapaho) its 2021-2022 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence. Since 2002, the Perlmutter Residency has been part of the Rose Art Museum’s longstanding tradition of promoting artists of extraordinary talent whose works address contemporary issues of vital urgency.

Smokey Joe’s is a pure jukebox musical; there is no plot and no dialogue, just the songs from this team – Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller whose fame was mainly in the 1950s and ‘60s. Their music connected to both rock ‘n roll and rhythm and blues genres and was made popular by Elvis Presley among others

Alternate versions of an opera arouse controversy.The multiple versions of Verdi’s grand opera Don Carlos (Don Carlo) were a response to different productions. Terrence Blanchard adapted his opera Fire Shut up in My Bones for the Metropolitan Opera’s stage. Now we have the magnificent, original Boris Godunov.