Fine Arts
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Barbara Takenaga at Williams College Museum of Art
The Optics of Metaphysical Cosmology
By: - Oct 07th, 2017The Williams College Museum of Art, through the end of January, is presenting “Barbara Takenaga” a stunning overview of 60 works of varying scale, that represent two decades of her oeuvre. The selection was made in collaboration with independent curator Debra Bricker Balken.
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Morgan Bulkeley Retrospective at Berkshire Museum
Last of the Mohicans
By: - Oct 08th, 2017It was thrilling, poignant and terribly sad last night when many artists, friends and community packed the Berkshire Museum for a vernissage of the sprawling, eclectic, and dazzling retrospective Morgan Bulkeley: Nature Culture Clash. It may be the last such project focused on a Berkshire based artist. As a part of its New Vision the museum is dumping 40 works of art and reconfiguring. Van Shields and the board refuse to discuss the fate of the remaining collection of 40,000 objects and the role if any of the fine arts in its plans.
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The Odd Couple Warhol and Rockwell
Populism as Commonality Explored at Rockwell Museum
By: - Oct 12th, 2017The artists Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol became rich and famous for giving the public what it wanted. It is this shared populism which is explored in an evocative exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Not surprisingly the exhibition has been mobbed with visitors.
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Group Fundraises to Block Berkshire Museum Sale
Save the Save
By: - Oct 13th, 2017“This is a classic case of confronting a well-organized, well-financed, misguided inside group, hoping to lead them to their better angels,” said Leslie Ferrin, founder of Save the Art. “That’s why we’re crowd-sourcing Save the Art’s legal action fund. We want to invite people to step up at whatever level they can, and say, “we support finding a better solution.”
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Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History
Co Founder of Provincetown’s Ciro’s and Sal’s
By: - Oct 23rd, 2017Now 92, the first generation Italian born artist, Salvatore Del Deo, settled in Provincetown in the post war 1940s. To pay for paint he did all the usual odd jobs. On summer he shippied out on a scallop boat. That experience richly informs a poignant triptych “Homage to the Patricia Marie” which was a part of his retrospective Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis. Famously he teamed up with another starving artist, Ciro Cozzi, to co found the legendary restaurant Ciro's and Sals. He later started his own Sal's Place.
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Cape Cod Museum of Art
Promoting Regional Visual Arts Since 1980
By: - Oct 24th, 2017During our visit to the Cape Cod Museum of Art we viewed several special exhibitions: Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History, extended through October 28, Discovering Cape Cod’s Museum Treasures, through November 26, and Judith Shahn Selections: A Tribute to Thomas Linxweiler through November 12. We met with Dr. Edith Tonelli who has been director for the past four years. She provided an overview of the museum and plans moving forward. We also learned why the museum and adjacent Cape Playhouse prove to have been uniquely moving experiences.
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Arnold Trachtman at Galatea Fine Arts
More from a Concerned Artist
By: - Oct 29th, 2017Since the late 1960s I have curated and written about the work of the Cambridge based, activist and artist, Arhold Trachtman. A few of us- scholars, curators and critics- share a convicition that he is on the short list of most significant Boston artists of his generation. Given the highly charged and passionate focus of the work it has been in general too hot to handle for mainstream museums and curators. He has a staunch champion in Marjorie Kaye, the emeritus founder of Galatea Gallery, who co cuated the current exhiition with the artist's daughter Maxima Baudissin.
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Ersatz Cubist Dana Shutz
A Metaphysical Pratfall
By: - Nov 11th, 2017There were protests when Dana Shutz exhibited a painting of the mutilated black youth Emmet Till in his coffin. It was a controversial inclusion in the Whitney Biennial. It is not a part of a large overview of her work at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. There the curators have over expained the work with excessively detailed wall labels. It conveys the notion that the work in a kitchy, ersatz Cubist manner cannot speak for itself. Activists have petiitioned the ICA to shut down the exhibition.
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Villa Dolores by Rafael Mahdavi
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
By: - Nov 30th, 2017Since the 1980s, the artist Rafael Mahdavi has been a colleague and friend. For many years, in addition to painting, photography and sculpture, he has been writing. Recently, he published a second book Villa Dolores a memoir of childhood and adolescence with another volume, already written to follow. He is also revisiting, editing and preparing for publication several novels. This memoir is relatively brief, just 173 pages, but compact , polished, explosively evocative and poetic. I took my time reading brief chapters of two or three pages. Each was a distilled and detailed anecdote, some horrific in nature, that flowed like an intimate conversation.
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MASS MoCA Update
Winter/ Spring Programming
By: - Dec 14th, 2017MASS MoCA heads into the winter/spring season with new works in the spotlight, on stage, and in the galleries. The season kicks off on January 20 with the museum’s annual Free Day, when MASS MoCA opens its galleries, free of charge, and activates its art with family-focused activities and performances throughout the day.
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Berkshire Museum Top Arts Story of 2017
Coverage Morphed from Local to National News
By: - Dec 26th, 2017A decision on an appeal by Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, to halt the sale of 40 key works of art at Sothebys on behalf of the Berkshire Museum will be decided by the end of January. Van Shields, now on medical leave as director of the museum, and board president, Elizabeth "Buzz" McGraw, announced their $60 million plans for a New Vision in July. What started as a local story has morphed into national and global coverage. The outcome of this unethical attempt at deaccessioning by a pariah museum may have a game changing impact on the mandate of all American museums' commitment to preserve and conserve collections for future generations.
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The Jewel Of The Douro Valley
Since 1880 Ramos Pinto Has Produced Port
By: - Jan 07th, 2018The Ramos Pinto brothers founded Ramos Pinto in 1880 and marketed the port wine producing company to Brazilians. They commissioned remarkable artworks illustrating their products and guerilla marketing practices. Today, the posters are iconic and the new owners, Champagne Roederer, have been following in the footsteps of Antonio and Adriano Ramos Pinto.
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Berkshire Museum Will Gut Its Collection
Matter to be Settled with Supreme Judicial Court
By: - Feb 10th, 2018A compromise is a deal that neither side is happy with. Other than a few hard fought concessions the Berkshire Museum will now gut the museum and its collection in pursuit of its vulgarian, populist New Vision. It's tarnished leadership, including director, Van Shields and board president, Elizabeth McGraw, will have a tough job earning back the trust and support of a community which they so adroitly alienated.
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David Ricci’s Edge of Chaos
Studio Visit with a Berkshire Photographer
By: - Feb 14th, 2018For the past year the Berkshire based photographer, David Ricci, has been working on a large format, expensive and ambitious book. It has a working title of Edge of Chaos and surveys four decades of his oeuvre. During a studio visit we viewed the work and how it is evolving into a publication.
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Thomas Merton's The Glory of the Word
Coney Island of the Mind
By: - Feb 14th, 2016Thomas Merton observed that the meditation exercises in the Buddhist tradition in many ways were more refined and subtle than those of Christianity and sought to integrate them into the monastic tradition of the Church without changing the importance of Christian notions of salvation. At a moment when his drift toward Eastern thought was picking up speed he died accidentally from electrocution due to bad wiring in a Thai hotel.
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Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida
A Three Ring Circus of Art
By: - Mar 22nd, 2024The Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida is one of the most unique, and curious collections in America. It is sited on a manicured, tropical, 66-acre campus that conflates nature, leisure, warmth and depth in Old Master paintings, Ancient Mediterranean art, Asian art, 19th and 20th century art, prints, drawings and photography, as well as extensive circus related memorabilia. There are period rooms with collections of decorative arts. Through expansion it is now the 20th largest American museum.
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Connected Spaces: Cheryl Ann Thomas & Michael F. Rohde
At Gallery NAGA
By: - Jan 03rd, 2023Gallery NAGA welcomes 2023 with a selection of works by two artists, Cheryl Ann Thomas and Michael F. Rohde, in a feat of interdisciplinary collaboration. This exhibition was first organized by the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona California and curated by Jo Lauria, Adjunct Curator for the American Museum of Ceramic Art and a design historian based in Los Angeles, California.
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Dear Suzanne By Eve Rifkah
19th Century French Artist and Model
By: - Dec 28th, 2022Her father, an artist, took the poet Eve Rifkah to the Museum of Fine Arts. There the young girl became intrigued by Suzanna Valadon the model for Renoir's stunning Bal a Bougival. She has written a book of verse comprising conversations with and about herself and the legendary artist/ model. Our paths crossed at Manship Artists Residency.
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Jeanne Renaud (1928 - 2022)
Montreal Artist and Choreographer
By: - Sep 16th, 2022Jeanne Renaud the Montreal artist, dancer and choreographer has passed away at 94. She created choreography for the film Brèves histoires de pierres muettes (2018) and le Projet Feldman/Renaud à la Salle Bourgie in 2021, with the dancers Louise Bédard and Marc Boivin.
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Peri Schwartz: Self Portraits & Studio Paintings
At Boston's Gallery NAGA
By: - Jan 08th, 2021The exhibition comprises a mix of both studio paintings as well as self portraits dating to the 80s and 90s. The studio paintings reflect Schwartz’s long history of using her space as her subject matter.
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James T. Demetrion at 90
Former Director of Hirshorn Museum
By: - Dec 02nd, 2020James T. Demetrion, the second and longest-serving director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1984–2001) and director of the Des Moines Art Center (1969–1984) and Pasadena Art Museum (1964–1966), died Nov. 29. Demetrion had celebrated his 90th birthday in July.
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What Joe Thompson Means to Northern Berkshire County
The Daunting Legacy of MASS MoCA
By: - Aug 22nd, 2020Joe Thompson graduated from Williams College in 1981. As founding director of MASS MoCA he has been here ever since. Stepping down in October he will sever ties next summer. Between now and then he will plan the next move. Other than some loose ends his remarkable work here is complete. Magnificently so.
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Collage Brain: Insights, Ideas, Inspiration
An Ilustrated Book by Berkshire Artist
By: - Jun 13th, 2020The collage artist Lynn Gall divides time between the Berkshire and New York where she works and exhibits. Collage Brain: Insights, Ideas, Inspiration is her first book.
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Berkshire Cartoonist Howard Cruse
Stuck Rubber Baby's 25th Anniversary Edition
By: - May 01st, 2020Howard Cruse was a pioneering gay cartoonist and Berkshire neighbor. He passed away last year. His legendary Stuck Rubber Baby is having its 25th anniversary edition. The publication will be available this summer.
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WHEN, show at MASS MoCA
By Ledelle Moe
By: - Jan 25th, 2020WHEN: Not if, but when all our lives come to an end. - Here we are searching for personal meaning and memories via a monumental sculpture exhibition that expresses obliquely life and death issues of today and since Millennia.
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