Fine Arts
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Rembrandt at the Frick
The Artist's Divine Encounter
By: - Jul 08th, 2017It’s often said that in some museums you go from a masterpiece to something less in a step. The Frick, mainly the inspiration of the daughter of the steel magnate from Pittsburgh who dueled with Andrew Carnegie, each work that hangs on the walls of the Frick home in New York is perfection.
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Berkshire Museum Dumps the Fine Arts
Selling Two Paintings by Norman Rockwell and 38 Other Works
By: - Jul 21st, 2017When the Berkshire Museum announced plans to focus on science and history there was initial euphoria. To reach a goal of $60 millon, $20 for renoivation, and $40 million for endowment it will sell 40 works of art including two paintings by Norman Rockwell which the artist gave to the museum and his Berkshire neighbors. In so doing it violates deaccession restrictions for art museums. In a shuffle Van Shields, the director of BM, has stated that he does not run an art musuem and is not bound by ethical guidelines. That may change as coverage evolves from local to national news.
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Artist Stephen Hannock On Berkshire Museum
How Selling the Art Betrays the Community
By: - Jul 22nd, 2017Works by Stephen Hannock are in global museum collections. His Oxbow painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be included in a survey of Hudson River artist Thomas Cole. Hannock's mate Sting will also be involved in the project. When he created paintings for his friend's hometown of Newscastle the studies were shown at the Berkshire Museum. He gave one of the studies to the museum to honor philanthropist Nancy Fitzgerald. The fact of that work and the entire fine arts collection of the museum is unknown. We talked at length with the Berkshire based global artist about the impact of the museum's strategy to sell its fine arts collection with a radical makeover as an interactive educational museum for history and science.
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I'll Drink to That at Eclipse Mill Gallery
National Exhibition of Pottery
By: - Jul 23rd, 2017The Eclipse Mill Gallery, in North Adams, is featuring a special exhibition of unique drinking vessels "I'll Drink to That." It opens with a reception for the artists on Friday, August 4, from 6 to 8pm. It remains on view, Thursday to Sunday, from 10 am through 5pm, through August 27. Some 25 renowned potters from coast to coast will display their work.
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Christian Marclay Performs Calder
Small Sphere, Heavy Sphere at the Whitney
By: - Jul 24th, 2017Small Sphere, Large Sphere was Alexander Calder's first mobile construction. Hanging in the center of the Hess Theater at the Whitney Museum in New York, it is set in motion, not only to delight the eye, but the ear as well. Christian Marclay makes music with the small wooded sphere carved by Calder.
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Berkshire Museum Ignores Outcry
40 Works to be Sold at Sotheby’s
By: - Jul 27th, 2017In compiling a list of 40 works to deaccession the Berkshire Museum opted to sell no works given by living artists or donors. When Norman Rockwell gave two works to the museum the letter, which is referred to in media coverage, states his wish to share them with the people of the Berkshires. In selling the works is the museum in legal violation of that trust? GIven the sensitivity of what is at stake we demand that the museum make public the artist's letter.
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Berkshire Artist Arthur Yanoff's Exhibition
Reynolds Fine Art in New Haven
By: - Jul 29th, 2017The Thimble Islands are an archipelago of more than 100 pieces of land in Long Island Sound, off northeastern Connecticut. Some are big enough for people to live on, but many more are just tiny granite outcroppings. Arthur Yanoff visited them a year or so ago, and created a sequence of abstract paintings about them. They will be shown at Reylonds Gallery in New Haven.
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Berkshire Museum Stonewalls Critics
Hires Costly PR to Spin Its Reboot
By: - Aug 02nd, 2017When ethical concerns and second guessing of its "reboot" plans surfaced the Berkshire Museum has spent money it doesn't have for expensive PR and marketing. Heavy hitters have been hired to deflect tough questions from the media and flack the museum's strategy to sell 40 works of art and change its mandate.
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Trident Gallery Update
From Sphere to Edge in Late Summer
By: - Aug 04th, 2017There is always something provocatice going on at Gloucester's Trident Gallery. The arts are the visible cloak of the bonds -- both empowering and restricting -- of community and heritage. The cloak of the arts reveals the shape of the present, bears the patterns and must of the past, and declares ourselves on our journey into the future.
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Rockwell Family Opposes Berkshire Museum Sale
Game Changer and Time to Rethink the Reboot
By: - Aug 05th, 2017When Laurie Norton Moffett, director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, in a Berkshire Eagle op-ed piece asked the Berkshire Museum to "pause" in its plan to sell 40 works the story broke as national news. In daily coverage since then the pro and con has rocked back and forth. I seemed like game over when Joe Thompson, director of MASS MoCA, endorsed the sale and radical plans urging readers to "get real." Then lawyers waded in questioning that the works may or may not be "unrestricted." The controversy went into extra innings when the Rockwell family, in an Eagle letter, stated that the artist never intended for his works to be sold as a last ditch bailout for the poorly managed and curatorially aenemic museum.
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JACK Quartet at the Whitney Museum
Accompanying Alexander Calder
By: - Aug 06th, 2017Members of the JACK Quartet are scattered across the eighth floor exhibit space at the Whitney Museum in which many Alexander Calder mobiles hang and stand. In the center of the room on the south wall, cellist Jay Campbell and violinist Austin Wulliman are conventionally seated with their music stands before them. They do not seem to notice violinist Christopher Otto who stands at the east entrance, only a music stand dividing him from a roaming, and finally seated and standing-still audience. At another entrance Jay Pickford Richards, violist, is completely in his own world, oblivious to in your face cameras, and the wandering audience. John Cage wrote the Quartet they will perform, not for a quartet, but for four soloists.
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Emergence of St. Francis Gallery in Lee
Art With A Cause
By: - Aug 08th, 2017St. Francis Gallery, once a church, hosts a gallery opening and artists reception this weekend in Lee, Massachusetts from 3-6pm on Saturday, August 12th
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Protesting Berkshire Museum's Unethical Sale
Pickets Planned for Saturday Morning August 12
By: - Aug 10th, 2017The artists and their supporters in the Berkshires will take to the streets on Saturday, August 12, from 9 AM to noon. There will be picket lines in front ot the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. They will provide a visible presence of those protesting the pending sale of 40 choice works and plans to gut and "reboot" the historic museum and collections.
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Pickets Protest Berkshire Museum Meltdown
Orderly Demonstration in Front of Museum
By: - Aug 13th, 2017From 9 AM to noon there was an ordely and peaceful demonstration in front of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. Pickets came and went with between 40 and 80 individuals linuing the sidewalk at any given time. Most passing cars honked their support. There was a media presence. While museum director, Van Shields, remained hunkered down in the bunker, board president Elizabeth "Buzz" Hayes McGraw delivered her boilplate message to a TV crew from Albany.
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David A Ross Opposes Berkshire Museum Sale
Renowned Former Whitney Museum Director Posts Statement
By: - Aug 13th, 2017The renowned former Whitney Museum director, David A. Ross, in an exclusive statement posted to Berkshire Fine Arts strongly opposes plans initiated by the Berkshire Museum. “This is a sad affair. Perhaps the board, if unwilling to raise funds in the way all museums have to, should resign (along with its feckless director). My feeling is it should merge administratively with another educational non-profit in the region, and then begin the process of stabilization. It would be preferable to see the museum close for a few years of re-organization, than to forever destroy the core of its irreplaceable art collection.”
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Laurie Norton Moffatt on the Role of Trustees
Rockwell Museum Director Argues for Respect
By: - Aug 14th, 2017In a key op-ed piece for the Berkshire Eagle, Laurie Norton Moffatt the director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, called on the Berkshire Museum to "pause" its plans to sell 40 works including two by Rockwell. Largely based on her position the story broke in the national media. In the process the rhetoric escalated. In this opinion piece she asks for a wider understanding of the commmitment and responsibilites of serving on boards of non profits. With so many cultural institutions looking for funding from the same small pool of donors there are parfticular and extreme pressures for boards in the Berkshires. She calls for a focus on issues and not individuals.
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Figuratively Speaking at Eclipse Mill Gallery
Five Berkshire Artists Explore the Human Condition
By: - Aug 15th, 2017The special exhibition Figuratively Speaking, at the Eclipse Mill Gallery, September 1 to 24, offers fresh and evocative interpretations allowing for a broad range of approaches to the perennial conundrum of the human condition. The five Berkshire based artists include William Archer, Joanna Klain, Linda O’Brien, Opie O’Brien, and Wilma Rifkin.
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MAGMA Opens in Gloucester
Dance Program of Sarah Slifer Swift
By: - Aug 29th, 2017To launch Sareah Slifer Swft's Movement Art Gloucester MA (MAGMA) there were popup performances as well as card triks by her adolescent son Seamus. It was a fun way to christen a great space for dance and the performing arts.
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Frank Gehry to Design Northern Berkshire Museum
Bilbao Effect Anticipated for North Adams
By: - Sep 02nd, 2017In May the world's foremost architect, Frank Gehry, signed on to design The Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum in North Adams. It is one of 11 projects being developed by visionary museum director Thomas Krens. There is a daunting sticker price of some $300 miliion for construction anticipated to start as early as June, 2018.
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Everything Old Is New Again
David Hockney at Eighty
By: - Sep 05th, 2017Happy Birthday Mr. Hockney: Self Portraits and Photographs at Getty Museum in Los Angeles remains on view through November 26. On the occasion of his 80th birthday there are many incentives to evaluate the British born artist who for many years has resided in Santa Monica. Paintings of his pool are among the most admired of his works that range from self portraits to "joiners" or photo collages.
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Conspiracy to Decimate Berkshire Museum
Protests Planned for September 9
By: - Sep 08th, 2017Barring intervention by the Attorney General, at best a long shot, plans to sell 40 works of art with two paintings by Norman Rockwell worth as much as the remaining 38 lots, the fall auctions by Sotheby’s in New York appears to be a done deal .For the second time protestors will picket in front of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield from 10 am to 2 pmon Saturday, September 9. This past week Sotheby’s announced a presale estimate of “thirty pieces of silver.”
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Berkshire Museum Financials
Follow the Money
By: - Sep 18th, 2017Based on an extensive Berkshire Eagle background check of Van Shields, and a failed attempt to create a radical new museum in South Carolina, it appears that he arrived in Pittsfield, a month after being fired, with an agenda. Funding plans that failed there entail selling 40 treasures of the Berkshire Museum. Through intensive study of non profit reports filed with the charity desk of the Attorney General, Thomas White, with knowledge of these matters, has sent us bullet points. They shed light on the "dire straits" forcing the museum to decimate its legacy to rebuild for the future.
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Bennington Center for the Arts
Announces Award wWnners at Art Opening
By: - Sep 27th, 2017This past weekend The Bennington Center for the Arts held an opening reception for two fall exhibitions, The Collective Members’ Show and the Artists for the New Century. Awards were announced for Artists for the New Century as well as for the outgoing Laumeister Fine Art Competition.
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Van Shields' A New Vision Comes at a Price
Berkshires Heritage and Legacy Worth More Than $60 Million
By: - Sep 28th, 2017To launch A New Vision for the Berkshire Museum it plans to sell 40 key works for some $60 miillion. That's a pot of gold but comes at a terrible cost to the heritage, legacy and cultural branding of the Berkshires. Van Shiields and the museum board insist that there is no other option. That disrespect raises questions regarding stewardship of the 40,000 works in the collection including 2,395 fine art pieces.
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Berkshire Museum Stonewalls New Yorker
Van and Buzz Clam Up to Fake News Requests
By: - Oct 05th, 2017Relying primarily on published sources Felix Salmon in the New Yorker has reported on the deaccessioning and New Vision of the Berkshire Museum. As Solomon states “The story of the Berkshire Museum is more than one about a second-tier local institution selling off some art. It’s a story about how fragile museum-industry norms are, how unaccountable a museum director can be, and how much destruction can be wrought during a single secret trustee meeting. (The museum’s new P.R. representative, Carol Bosco Baumann, declined repeated requests to make anyone from the museum available for an interview.)” This is consistent with the museum's bunker mentality of playing hard ball with the media.
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