Institute of Contemporary Art

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Numerous cultural activities across the city with France present in several venues. Boston Symphony Orchestra presents a rich program of Berlioz, Mozart, Carter, Bartók; Harbison, Ravel, Mahler under the baton of the French conductor Ludovic Morlot. The Harvard Film Archives starts a series of Henri-Georges Clouzot films while the Museum of Fine Arts pursues Catherine Deneuve's retrospective.

Special this week events include in film Catherine Deneuve's retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, in opera Mozart's Don Giovanni the Metropolitan Opera Live on HD encore and Verdi's Nabuco at the Coolidge Corner Theatre; in dance Angel Reapers inspired by Ann Lee's life, founder of the Shaker movement at the Cutler Majectic Theatre; and the Untitled Still Life Collection by Trajal Harrell and Sarah Sze at the Institute of Contemporary Art.; and in music the Boston Philharmonic at Jordan Hall in a Brahms concert.

Boston selection of events: Trisha Brown Dance Company returns to Boston after over a decade hiatus at the Institute of Contemporary Art; not to miss Jean Yves Thibaudet and Angelika Kirchschlager at Jordan Hall part of the Boston Celebrity Series; the Jewish Film Festival continues at the Museum of Fine Arts and the Harvard Archives resumes its retrospective on Sergio Leone cinematographic oeuvre.

A week full of exceptional films: Andy Warhol at the Harvard Film Archives; The Palestinian Film Festival at the Museum of Fine arts, Trisha Brown dance performance at the ICA; Shumann and Strauss at The Boston Symphony Orchestra and much more....

This week highlights are: "Women of Will" at Central Square Theatre; Berlioz: Beatrice et Benedicte at the Cutler Majestic Opera Boston; the Palestinian Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts; ICA Art Music: Babaa Maal

This week highlights are the not to be missed MFA Christian Marclay’s video: “The Clock”; Central Square Theatre “Women of Will” play; Fenway Theater MET High Definition screening “Anna Bolena”; Harvard Film Archives “Dreamlife of Angels” and ICA Live performance “Knitting Nation Phase 7”.

An exceptional week of cultural activities in Boston & Cambridge: Trisha Brown’s Floor of the Forest, a mixture of sculpture, dance & performance at the ICA. The Harvard Film Archives showcase the work of the British filmmaker Ben Rivers and Romanian Andrei Ujica.

On the occasion of the opening of the Linde Family Wing of Contemporary Art we reflect on a troubling history. There has been a struggle going back to the 1930s and the founding of the Institute of Contemporary Art. There has been an awkward relationship between the ICA, MFA and other museums in the area. It is now time for art workers to unite and throw off their chains.

Directed by Susan Vogel (2011, 53 min.). Filmed over three years in Venice, Nsukka, and the United States, this is a powerful portrait of Africa’s most widely acclaimed contemporary artist El Anatsui. Fold Crumple Crush gives an insider’s view of the artist’s practice, the ingenious steps and thousands of hours of labor that convert used bottle tops into huge, opulent wall hangings. Anatsui explains how his artworks have become a marriage of painting and sculpture—objects that speak of African history but also reach for the ethereal—and he talks about his aspirations for artworks he has yet to make.

Nelida Nassar provides an overview of cultural offerings for the week of August 15 to 21. From Harvard Film Archives to previews of the anticipated Broadway bound production of Porgy and Bess at American Repertory Theatre.

During the dog days of Summer, here are some interesting leads on entrainment and culture for the week of Augst 8 for those of you hanging out in Boston. Summer in the City may simmer, but there are many cool things to do in Boston.

Eva Hesse was arguably one of the 20th Century's great sculptors male or female. Challenging herself with new, nontraditional and experimental materials and techniques, her work both synthesizes and transcends Minimalism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Conceptual Art. The rarely seen and rather small Studiowork pieces now on view at the ICA are 50 process and test sculptural objects that indicate the thought and direction of the artist as her worked developed. The small size of the exhibit leaves the viewer wanting much more.

Forty years later to the day a group of Boston artists, organized by Boston Phoenix art critic, Greg Cook, recreated a preemptive strike on the uptight and stuffy MFA. In a roto rooter event artists hung their works in the male and female rest rooms of the venerable Fenway dowager. The exhibition and reception was busted, rather politely, after just twenty hilarious minutes. But 21 artists can now put the MFA on their resume. Three of the artists, Robert Guillemin (Sidewalk Sam), David Raymond, and Jo Sandman reprieved their original participation. The big question focused on whether or not the MFA has really changed over the past 40 years?

For the past few decades, cities and prominent institutions have focused on creation of iconic buildings by star architects to underscore their prominence. After three major attempts in the last 25 years, The Whitney Museum of American Art has given up on building expansion of their Marcel Breuer designed iconic structure and are building a new museum downtown in NYC's Meatpacking District. This is a major statement about institutional icons.

Exploring with inflatables since the early 1960s, the multidimensional artist Otto Piene has been dazzling viewers with spectacular kinetic gestures of floating form, structure and line. On May 7, Piene's Sky Art piece was part of the culminating event of the FAST Festival. With the assistance of a group of artists, students and MIT alumni, Piene's environmental art flew as a brightly lit star over Killian Court. However, Otto Piene is a world class artist that has not been properly recognized.

Fed up with its lack of interest in contemporary art on June 15, 1971 a group of Boston artists organized a top secret exhibition Flush with the Walls in the Men's Room of the Museum of Fine Arts. It scared the crap out of then director Perry T. Rathbone. Fearing further guerrilla attacks shortly after the infamous stunt the museum appointed Kenworth Moffett as its first curator of Contemporary Art.

The third conference, presented byTransCultural Exchange in Boston, closed on Sunday, April 10 to great applause for director, Mary Sherman, sponsors, board members, staff and volunteers. It was again a phenomenal effort with participants from around the world. If you were not in the position to attend the conference, but have ambitions to exhibit or work internationally, or attend national or international retreats, residencies or symposia, please also read this article. It includes a number of hyperlinks to organizations and websites for easy research.

Appropriately titled: ‘The Interconnected World’ the conference will be held from April 7 – 10. Mary Sherman, the TransCultural Exchange director, again will bring together global speakers and participants in a chock-full four day long conference. Interactive panel discussions, exhibitions, music events, book and poetry readings, portfolio reviews, workshops demystifying subjects and much more will offer new opportunities in the US and world-wide organizations at an ever greater event.

Since designing Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art in 2006, architects Diller Scofidio+Renfro have become something of the architectural flavor of the decade for art institutions and universities. Their latest project which opened in February at Brown University in Providence is another one of their bold visual statements that says as much about the multi-arts center that it houses as the aesthetics of the designers. It is an edifice visually to embrace.

The AICA-USA awards ceremony, which has been held annually for more than 25 years, will take place at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art on March 14 2011 at 6 PM. Awards will be presented by a group of distinguished artists and curators. Elizabeth C. Baker will be honored with a special Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Criticism. Museum curators, artists and critics from around the country are expected to attend.

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents ambitious performing arts programming for Winter/Spring 2011, including world-premiere dance, revolutionary theater and a vaudevillian spectacular. The New Music Now series returns with three exciting concerts of adventurous music, and the ICA presents its first "live documentary," narrated by filmmaker Sam Green alongside live performances by sound artist David Cerf and band The Quavers (featuring special guest Brendan Canty of Fugazi).

The world-premiere adaptation of LYSISTRATA by the renowned puppet artist, writer and director Theodora Skipitares – which mixes Aristophanes’ ancient comic tale about a group of Greek women who withhold sex from their husbands and lovers with video and newsreel footage of actual modern-day international sex strikes – is being presented by La MaMa ETC in association with Skysaver Productions, with an opening set for Sunday, February 6 at the Ellen Stewart Theatre (66 E. 4 St.) in Manhattan.

The MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston present the first museum survey of the work of media art pioneer Stan VanDerBeek (1927-1984). Surveying the artist's remarkable body of work in collage, experimental film, performance, participatory, and computer-generated art over several decades, Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom highlights the artist's pivotal contributions to today's media-based artistic practices.

Every two years, the Institute of Contemporary Art chooses an emerging artist to recognize by celebrating their work and awarding them $25,000. This year's winner of the James and Audrey Foster Prize is Anie Siegal. Siegel works in 16mm and 35mm film, video, photography, sound, and writing. She often uses cinematic images as a material means to a conceptual end. For the ICA's 2010 Foster Prize exhibition, Siegel created Black Moon, a 20-minute film accompanied by prints of individual frames from the film.

In certain aspects of its collection, Old Kingdom Egypt and Asiatic Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is a world class museum. With the creation of the Art of the Americas wing the museum hopes to rank second to none among American museums. But, as the Bard would say, "What's in a name?" A closer look reveals formidable depth and glaring gaps in the attempt to cover 3,000 years of art on two continents.