Fine Arts
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Yayoi Kusama at Serpentine Gallery
Giant Bronze Pumpkin
By: - May 30th, 2024Serpentine and The Royal Parks announce the unveiling of a new large-scale sculpture by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Matsumoto, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo, Japan). Located by the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, Pumpkin (2024) will be staged from 9 July to 3 November 2024.
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Rafael Mahdavi Paints a Mural
On the Cycladic Island of Paros
By: - May 30th, 2024In the spirit of the centennial of Surrealism Rafael Mahdavi has created a mural on an exterior wall. "The wall for the mural is part of a friend’s house on the Cycladic Island of Paros. I spend my summers there. I first met Frank at my first solo painting show in NYC at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1973. Frank and I stayed in touch, he liked my work. Last year he commissioned the mural. Seven by seven meters."
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Jane Hudson: New Paintings
Spring Street Market Café in Williamstown
By: - Jun 02nd, 2024Jane Hudson is one of the most prolific and widely exhibited artists in the Berkshires. What makes it engaging is that the work is always evolving. The latest iteration is serene, reductive, geometric and abstract. The simplicity is ever more compelling. She seems to be making her way through modernism at warp speed.
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Berkshire Museum to Undergo Renovation
Commences in October 2024
By: - Jun 03rd, 2024“This major initiative will strengthen our community bonds and rekindle a deep appreciation for the heritage that defines Pittsfield and the Berkshires. Through these enhancements, we aim to create a dynamic cultural hub that celebrates our past and inspires future generations.” said Kimberley Bush Tomio, Berkshire Museum’s Executive Director.
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Jeremy Couillard
MIT List Visual Arts Center
By: - Jun 04th, 2024This summer, the MIT List Visual Arts Center will present Jeremy Couillard’s first solo museum exhibition. Trained as a painter, Couillard is self-taught as a coder and digital artist. His projects exist as playable games, web projects, and video installations—often spanning multiple forms simultaneously.
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Forum '49 in Provinctown Revisited
Summmer Long Exhibitions and Events Spawned the Irascibles
By: - Jun 05th, 2024Seventy five years ago the artists Weldon Kees and Fritz Bultman organized the summer long event Forum '49. In weekly lectures and panels the issues of the day were debated from the fine arts and architectures to jazz, literature, psychoanalysis the face off of Paris vs New York and the threat of Stalinism. The exhibits were staged in a popup space in protest over the conservative programming of the Provincetown Art Association. The dissent moved to New York and a petition against the Met signed by the Irascibles including P'town artists.
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Joseph Beuys and the Cayote
Iconic Installation That Too Few Saw
By: - Jun 09th, 2024It is ironic — but understandable — that 50 years ago only a handful of people experienced what has become one of the iconic happenings of 20th century art.
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Astrid Hiemer and Michelle Wiley at Eclipse Gallery
Homage to the Centennial of Surrealism
By: - Jun 09th, 2024The collaboration between "Astrid Hiemer and Michelle Wiley, Our Surreality" on view at the Eclipse Gallery in North Adams through July 7, is inspired by Dada and Surrealism. In creating this inventive exhibition they have torn up the conventional playbook. Expect the unexpected in this witty and inventive exhibition. The work is engaging, confounding and brimming with life spirit.
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Marjorie Kaye at Future Labs
Starburts in North Adams
By: - Jun 10th, 2024In Marjorie Kaye's recent body of work, isolating shapes are inherent in her paintings, examining and delving further into their nature. She finds limitless potential in particular intuitive algorithms, with an infinite number of patterns that can be determined from the visual arrangement of mathematical suggestions. In this new series, space is broken down as it emerges from the center.
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Sarah Ganz Blythe Appointed
New John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums
By: - Jun 12th, 2024Sarah Ganz Blythe, a highly respected curator, educator, and scholar with more than 25 years of museum experience, will be the new Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums, interim Provost John Manning announced Wednesday. Ganz Blythe is joining Harvard from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, where she is currently deputy director, exhibitions, education, and programs.
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Dada Was a Mother
Anarchy and Anti-Art Movement Led to Surrealism
By: - Jun 23rd, 2024Reacting to the carnage of WWI Dada was spawned at the Cafe Voltaire in Zurich in 1916. The absurdist, anti-art movement was founded by sound and noise poet and performance artist Hugo Ball. He wrote its influential manifesto. The Cafe lasted several months but the spirit of Dada spread to Berlin, New York and Paris. Largely a literary movement its artifacts are rare. They survive as ransom note graphics and raw agit-prop collages, Dada perished in the mayhem of culture wars in Paris in 1922. Many of its artists were absorbed into surrealism which had two published manifestos in 1924.
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Ballroom by Augustina Woodgate
Peabody Essex Museum
By: - Jun 25th, 2024This summer, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) invites you to reimagine the world of maps and globes in an installation conceived by Argentinian artist Agustina Woodgate. In Ballroom, the gallery floor is filled with globes that have been meticulously sanded to remove all traces of information, transforming what were once vital sources of knowledge into mute objects.
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Comedian Martin Mull at 80
Boston’s Smart Duckys
By: - Jun 29th, 2024Before he left for Hollywood, Martin Mull started as an artist in Boston. He partnered with fellow RISD graduate, Todd McKee, as the satirical Smart Duckys. With a twist I covered their first pop-up exhibition for the Boston Herald Traveler. Mull is best known for a long career in film and television. Artist, musician, actor he was a man of many talents.
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Guillaume Guillon-Lethière at Clark Art Instiute
Long Forgotten Academic Artist in Project with the Louvre
By: - Jul 02nd, 2024Though long forgotten, gigantic works by the academic painter Guillaume Guillon-Lethière have been hiding in plain sight at the Louvre. Installed in the 1830s they flank the walls of the museum's gift shop. That will be removed when the first ever major retrospective of the artist moves from Williamstown to Paris. He was born to a plantation owner and slave woman in Guadeloupe. In his day he was respected but less so with time until now. The Clark exhibition makes a less than compelling case for his reevaluation. With more large signature works the Louvre show may better state his case.
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Centennial of Surrealism
An Enduring Presence
By: - Jul 02nd, 2024The vibrant anti art movement Dada fizzled in Paris in 1922. A number of its exponents, artists and writers, regrouped with the launch of Surrealism just two years later. It broke out in Paris with competing manifestos published by Andre Breton and Yvan Goll. They each led rival factions but the more aggressive Breton prevailed. It proved to be the ,most popular and sustained movement of modernism. There are numerous current exhibitions celebrating its legacy.
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Artist Katherine Porter Broke Out in Boston
A Posthumous Interview
By: - Jul 11th, 2024In the late 1960s a new generation of artists revitalized the Boston art world. They created Studio Coalition the nation's first open studios event. Katherine Porter emerged with immediate recognition and success. She was shown twice in Whitney Biennials and exhibited in major galleries. Social concerns informed her work. She moved a number of times seeking a like minded community. We reconnected when for several years she lived in Vermont. In her final recent move she settled in Santa Fe.
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Jaune Quick To See Smith on Katherine Porter
An Appreciation from a Renowned Artist to Another
By: - Jul 11th, 2024Jaune Quick to See Smith responded to my posthumous interview with Katherine Porter. It was too long and detailed to post as a comment. It's a remarkable tribute from a renowned woman artist to another. Recently Jaune was given a retrospective by the Whitney Museum. I have had a long involvement with both of these artists.
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Video Master Bill Viola at 73
Early Work in Boston
By: - Jul 14th, 2024Bill Viola is remembered by Bostonians for his early installation "Room for Saint John of the Cross" at the Institute of Contemporary Art. He also created a video triptych for the Fulller Museum of Art. A champion was David Ross who hired him as an assistant at the Everson Museum in 1971. Ross later showed him at the ICA and Whitney Museum.
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Norton Gallery in Palm Beach
One of America's Top Regional Museums
By: - Jul 30th, 2024The Norton Gallery has been enlarged with a design by Lord Norman Foster. The collection has grown to 8,200 works with five curatorial departments. It took us two days to tour the collection and special exhibitions. The must see Norton is an elite regional museum. It's come a long way from when I visited annually during the 1980s.
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Cape Ann Museum Makeover
Over $18 million in Campaign Commitments
By: - Aug 05th, 2024Building on the generous support of the Museum’s Board, donors, and supporters amid growing momentum for general Museum operations, Director Oliver Barker and Henrietta Gates, Board Chair, announced that the institution has generated over $18 million in campaign commitments. This significant support will fund renovations to its Downtown facility, provide upgrades to the CAM Green campus, enhance programming, and augment the Museum’s endowment.
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Vessels of Slavery: Forget Me Not
Cape Ann Museum Green
By: - Aug 08th, 2024The artists were brought together by the work of Doris Prouty, an African American quilter who made Gloucester her home for nearly 50 years, when her work was exhibited posthumously at the Cape Ann Museum in 2022.
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Darrel Ellis and Miguel Ferrando at Candice Madey Gallery
Divergent Styles, Intertwined Lives: An Artistic Journey
By: - Aug 26th, 2024Darrel Ellis & Miguel Ferrando, delves into the intertwined lives and artistic journeys of two figures who were more than just friends—they were creative soulmates. Though their careers spanned only a handful of years (Ellis died of AIDS in 1992 at 34, and Ferrando in 1996, at 38 ), their work, showcased side-by-side, offers a rare glimpse into a unique artistic creative partnership from the 1980s.
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Dr. Nathaniel Halper Provincetown Arts Leader
Joyce Scholar and Gallerist
By: - Aug 29th, 2024Dr. Nathaniel Halper was the first Provincetown arts activist that I interviewed starting in 1982. He died just a year later leaving a distinguished legacy. For a time he was director of HCE then the most prominent of many galleries. In later years he formed a partnership with Mervin Jules to buy and resell from the estate of Karl Knaths. He offered many insights to the prominent arts community.
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Women Artists on Cape Ann: 1870-1970
Cape Ann Museum
By: - Aug 30th, 2024For its final exhibition before shutting down for renovation, the Cape Ann Museum took on but squandered presenting an important subject. Women Artists on Cape Ann: 1870-1970 was curated but under served by curator Martha Oaks. There is no catalogue, critical essay, or check list. Other than wall labels we learn little or nothing about obscure women artists. The museum opted to put minimal resources into what potentially was an important chapter of art history.
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Jeffrey Gibson at MASS MoCA
Installation in Building 5 Opens Nov. 3
By: - Sep 04th, 2024Jeffrey Gibson’s POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT is a newly commissioned immersive installation that will occupy MASS MoCA’s signature Building 5 gallery and follows Gibson’s highly celebrated United States representation at the 60th edition of La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition opens on November 3.
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