Mark Favermann
Bio:
Architecture, design, film and theatre critic/associate editor Mark Favermann, is an urban designer and public artist who over the past two decades has written extensively on art and design. A former Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, he was the first leader of the Boston Visual Artists Union (BVAU), the 1970's Boston activist artists organization, served as the former Director of Visual and Environmental Arts for the City of Boston and has been an adjunct professor at several universities. He was a columnist and/or editor for a large number of prominent publications. His own design work has included creating the award-winning marquee for the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, designing the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, creating the look for the 2000 NCAA Final Four in Indianapolis and the 1999 Ryder Cup as well as the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England. For the past eight seasons, he has been a design consultant to the Boston Red Sox. His 2005 public art commission, The Birds of Audubon Circle, was nominated by the Boston Art Commission as one of the best pieces of public art in America. In the Fall of 2007, his Recognition Gateway sculpture was installed in South Brookline.
Recent Articles:
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2011 Maud Morgan Prize To Wendy Jacob Fine Arts
Cambridge Artist to Display at MFA in September
By: - Jul 13th, 2011Last given in 2006, the Maud Morgan Prize was initially established as a purchase prize for under recognized midcareer women artists. The MFA has been criticized for nor awarding this prize by the local community. It has now been slightly changed to be a direct cash prize of $10,000 rather than the initial $5000 purchase prize. Another change is that recognition will now be given to more distinguished women artists. A small MFA exhibit of the artist's work is part of the prize. This year's recipient, Wendy Jacob combines high purpose with sculptural forms.
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Cy Twombly Dies In Rome Fine Arts
Creator of A Unique Elusive Aesthetic
By: - Jul 12th, 2011The aesthetically hard to pin down master artist Cy Twombly was one of the giants of contemporary art of the last sixty years. His work has been embraced as well as vilified. It is provocative, disturbing and incomprehensible while being somehow brilliant and heroic. Leaving a legacy of art of undefinable and probably irrelevant interpretation, Twombly died in Rome last week. Despite notions to the contrary, he lived half the year in Italy and half the year in his native Virginia.
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Temporary Structures Architecture
Architecture As Minimalist Functional Sculptures
By: - Jun 27th, 2011Traditionally, architects showcased their skills or made their professional bones by designing a house. Usually these were created for close relatives or more often their parents or wealthy patrons. Today, there seems to be a widespread trend of emerging architectural firms and practitioners to want to design functional sculptural forms that are often temporary. Sculptors working closely with structural engineers also build impermanent functioning structures. The results are often provocative and sometimes spectacular.
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New Director At RISD Museum of Art Fine Arts
John W. Smith Appointed
By: - Jun 16th, 2011Effective Fall 2011, John W. Smith will serve as the director of the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design. He brings a distinguished background to the job along with major fund-raising skills. He currently serves as the director of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and was formerly the assistant director at The Andy Warhol Museum. Mr. Smith is a talented curator, administrator and scholar.
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The Elegant Sculptured Door Knocker Design
Minimalist Functional Design
By: - Jun 07th, 2011Since 1988, the doorbell has not worked at my carriage house. After most of a terrible winter that saw new delivery people and first time visitors stand outside ringing the silent bell while getting cold and wet, I decided to find an appropriate door knocker. As a designer and appreciator of great design, I wanted the most beautiful damn door knocker that could be found. I think that I came close.
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Freedom Riders: An American Experience Opinion
A Journey for Justice That Became A Trip To Hell
By: - May 18th, 2011The PBS program Freedom Riders is the powerful story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives and endured savage beatings and imprisonment for simply traveling together on buses and trains through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence. Coming from all strata of American society, they embarked on these Freedom Rides knowing the danger but willing to put their lives on the line for the cause of justice. A personal connection is that George and his wife Ann Withorn were married nearly forty years ago by one of the Freedom Riders.
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Whitney Museum: Limits of Iconic Architecture Architecture
Buildings As Unique Sculpture Stifle Institutional Expansion
By: - May 16th, 2011For 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.
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Brilliant Drowsy Chaperone At Speakeasy Theatre
Hilarious Musical Comedy with Incredible Cast
By: - May 14th, 2011A winner of five 2006 Tony Awards, this show is a brilliant combination of mayhem, mix-ups and a gay (in the old sense of the word) wedding. It is a loving embrace of traditional and at times hokey broadway extravagances by a die-hard musical fan who plays his favorite cast album, a 1928 obscure musical "The Drowsy Chaperone." The show seamlessly and magically slips back and forth between the harshness of real life and the fantasy of the theatrical moment. This is a must-see show that is filled with surprises, delight and joy. Did I say that the Speakeasy cast is brilliantly talented? Run and get tickets. It does not get more entertaining than this.
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Colby College Purchases A David Smith Fine Arts
Sculpture Buy Is Opposite of Brandeis University's Tragedy
By: - May 12th, 2011With dwindling acquisition funds and the tight deadlines involved in raising the money in time to bid at a sale, it is unusual for a small museum to buy a significant piece at auction. However, Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine did just that. It acquired David Smith’s Voltri-Bolton II, a steel sculpture for $2,994,500 at Sotheby’s last Tuesday night. This is just two years after Brandeis University announced that it was closing its Rose Art Museum and planning to sell off its modern art collection. These institutions are poles apart from each other.
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Sky Art 2011 At MIT Fine Arts
Otto Piene Celebrates MIT's 150th
By: - May 08th, 2011Exploring 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.
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Huntington Theatre Given $10 Million Theatre
Largest Donation in Company's History
By: - Apr 28th, 2011The Huntington Theatre Company announced that the company has received an endowment gift of $10 million from the Calderwood Charitable Foundation. It is the largest single gift in Huntington history, instantly doubling the size of the Huntington’s endowment. The gift is among the largest gifts to a theatre company in U.S. history and to any arts organization in Boston.
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MIT Names New Media Lab Director Design
Joichi Ito, 44, College Drop-out And Entrepeneur
By: - Apr 26th, 2011With the appointment of Joichi Ito as the new Media Lab director, MIT has broken academic rules and appointed a megatalented entrepreneurial individual to lead the prestigious digital think tank and creative cauldron. However, with no academic credentials, what is the higher education institutional message that this appointment is making?
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Premiere of Sons of the Prophet At Calderwood Theatre
Too Much Story With Too Little Plot Resolution
By: - Apr 17th, 2011With clever quips and interesting ideas, playwright Steven Karam's new play has a talented cast and high production values. Unfortunately it is an overly complicated story that seems to along with its various threads unravel at the end. Dealing with among other things-- hyphenated Americans, gay sons, deteriorating old age, cult of sport and crazy middle age women, Karam has created a play with individual parts greater than the sum of its whole. Too bad.
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The Divine Comedy at Harvard Design
Olafur Elliasson. Ai Weiwei and Tomas Saraceno Exhibit
By: - Apr 17th, 2011The Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Art Museums are presenting a three-part exhibition that addresses the "converging domains of contemporary art and design practice." Entitled The Divine Comedy, this exhibition is comprised of major installations by internationally acclaimed artists Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saraceno, and Ai Weiwei. Though the premise of the exhibition may be academic and pretentious, the quality of the work speaks to beauty and truth.
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Charles Holden, London Underground Architect Architecture
Victoria & Albert Showcases Great Contribution to London
By: - Apr 15th, 2011On recent view (Oct 2-Feb 13, 2011) at London's Victoria and Albert Museum was a wonderful exhibition celebrating architect Charles Holden’s (1875-1960) designs for London Transport, Underground Journeys: Charles Holden's Designs for London Transport. The compact show included a beautiful selection of original drawings, photographs, posters, film, journals and models. His Piccadilly Line stations, such as Arnos Grove, Boston Manor and Southgate are regarded as modernist icons.
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Cocktail Culture At RISD Museum Design
Ritual and Invention in American Fashion 1920–1980
By: - Apr 12th, 2011An ambitious and elegant exhibition is the first multi-disciplinary show to explore the social and cultural rituals of the cocktail hour through the lens of fashion and design. Cocktail Culture features both formal and casual fashion apparel, jewelry, textiles, decorative and fine art, film, photographs, and period ephemera from across 60 years of American development and change. Drawn from the Museum’s vast collection as well as loans from other museums and private collections, more than 220 objects are included in this entertaining slice of 20th Century design.
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Peter Zumthor to Create Pavilion Architecture
Serpentine Gallery Hosts Swiss Pritzker Prize Winner
By: - Apr 09th, 2011London's Serpentine Gallery celebrates the art of architecture like no other institution. For 11 years, it has "commissioned" some of the best-known architects in the world to create temporary pavilions on its grounds for a few warm months. The Swiss architect Peter Zumthor is creating the 2011 structure. He is a true minimalist who uses materials in the most experiential ways.
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Victor Horta's Art Nouveau Architecture
Belgian Master of Organic Sinuous Designs
By: - Apr 07th, 2011Known for his Whiplash organic style, Victor Baron Horta (January 1861 - September 1947) was a master of Art Nouveau in Brussels. He influenced many other architects and designers throughout Europe, and his existing architectural work is now cherished. His former house and studio in the chic Brussels neighborhood of St. Gilles are now the Horta museum, a place of pilgrimage for architects and designers.
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Peter Brook's Beckett At ArtsEmerson Theatre
Master Director of the Intense Minimal at The Paramount
By: - Mar 23rd, 2011A rare event is taking place at ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theatre. Their World on Stage is currently presenting legendary theatre director Peter Brook in his first work in Boston in 40 years. The first program is by Samuel Beckett. Called Fragments, it is a group of four short pieces. The other is The Grand Inquisitor (based upon the Brothers Karamazov). Brook is known for his unique spare interpretation of theatre. He is a minimalist who conjures up great intensity both intellectual and visceral.
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A Cold Morning's Walk At Stonehenge Architecture
Looking At Ancient Cold Grey Stones
By: - Mar 18th, 2011Last December, after over 28 years and 18 visits to England on a quest to finally visit Stonehenge, Mark Favermann saw the ancient stone complex at sunrise on a bitterly cold day. He shot this series of images with cold fingers and red cheeks. To him, this ruined structure is great public art and ancient architecture, a sacred and visceral visual experience.
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Educating Rita At Huntington Theatre Theatre
Delightful Comedy of Class and Enlightenment
By: - Mar 17th, 2011In Educating Rita, Rita, a brash, young working class hairdresser with a developing free spirit, is hungry to improve her life. When she enrolls at the local free university, she discovers a passion for literature and turns her boozy and burnt-out professor’s life upside down and reinvents herself in this delightful Olivier award-winning comedy. The two person play is a spirited romp of self-discovery explored in language, accent and English literature.
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New Arts Building At Brown University Architecture
Architects Diller Scofidio+Renfro Create Elegant Center
By: - Mar 13th, 2011Since 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.
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The Salesman At MFA's Quebec Film Festival Film
Boston Series Showcases French Canadian Cinematic Talent
By: - Mar 12th, 2011Now an annual affair at the MFA, the Quebec Film Festival is an exceptional ambassador for the creative cinematic artistry of the Province of Quebec. The opening night film, The Salesman by a gifted young writer/director is about an older (67) perennial car salesman of the month. The salesman takes great satisfaction in the act of the sales, the ritual of persuasion. With no happy outcomes, this is a film about a particular life in a particular place to ponder for a long time.
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Edward Gorey At Boston Athenaeum Fine Arts
Draftsman of the Amusing Dark Side
By: - Mar 05th, 2011The Boston Athenaeum is currently exhibiting an exhibition of the elegant but somehow amusingly sinister works of writer/artist Edward Gorey. A deft draftsman of both line and word, Gorey's works are American originals created by an eccentric individual that gave both delight and dread with pen and ink.
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Robert Brustein Awarded National Medal of Arts Theatre
A.R.T. Founding Director Recognized By President Obama
By: - Mar 02nd, 2011The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States Government. Robert Brustein joins the roster of great American artists that includes Andrew Wyeth, John Updike, Wynton Marsalis, Barbra Streisand, Rita Moreno, Dolly Parton, Ray Bradbury, and Twyla Tharp.
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