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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The Eames Iconic Plywood Leg Splint Design
A Breakthrough Design Leading To New Furniture
By: - Dec 10th, 2011At the beginning of WWII, the United States War Department was in a dilemma. They needed a more modular, lightweight way of splinting wounded personnel. They turned to the creative Venice Beach based designers, Charles and Ray Eames, to help solve the problem. The Eameses had been working on molding plywood for the previous few years. Having accessible the Navy's facilities, their design team was able to develop a molded plywood splint. Sculptural and elegant, it is now a design icon.
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Three Pianos At American Repertory Theatre Theatre
A Delicious Toast to Franz Schubert and His Music
By: - Dec 08th, 2011Many laughs and a few tears unfold on a wintery night when three musically gifted friends find a copy of Schubert's song cycle Winterreise. Each with a piano and talented trained voices, the trio plays and sings into an often dreamlike reenactment of a Schubertiad—a musical salon often given by the composer and his friends. Butchering of the German language results as they wrestle with fundamental questions about the nature of music, love, and friendship. This OBIE-winning music-theater event wowed New York audiences and critics during a sold-out run. It wows at A.R.T. as well.
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ICA Announces WINTER/SPRING 2012 Schedule Film
Performances, Talks And Film Programs
By: - Dec 05th, 2011For the upcoming winter and spring 2012, the ICA has developed a full and provocative series of events that include an array of performances, film programs and lectures. Be there or be square.
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Powered By Free Design Design
UK Pylon Competition Sought New Design
By: - Nov 29th, 2011Called Britain's "industrial soldiers," they have marched across hills and valleys carrying the UK's 400,000-volt power lines. Now the British government and National Grid are ending the 84-year-old design of the electricity pylon. A competition was held to find a more attractive 21st-century alternative to carry power across hundreds of miles of British countryside. On paper, the idea sounds great, the winning design is elegant, but once again the design community is being undervalued and having demanded from it free work.
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Josef Hoffmann: Wiener Werkstätte Designer Design
Influential Designer With No Moral Compass
By: - Nov 29th, 2011Josef Hoffmann was one of the major designers of the first half of the 20th Century. His work across architecture, interiors, furniture and household objects was of great technical and aesthetic beauty. Also, he lived a long time. Unfortunately, his design skill did not always correspond to his moral integrity. Somehow, he was confused at the end of his life as to why he was not honored for his creative contributions. Perhaps, it was the fact that his last major work was for the wrong client.
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Chicago's Magnificent Millennium Park Architecture
Iconic Green Space Punctuated By Public Art
By: - Nov 26th, 2011Set near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline, Chicago's Millennium Park covers a 24.5-acre section of northwestern historic Grant Park, a vestige of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Massive public art and architectural statements make this open space wonderfully original and exhilarating. Millennium Park was opened on July 16, 2004, four full years behind schedule. Far exceeding its original budget of $150 million, it cost around $500 million to complete. Beyond the cost overruns, controversy and criticisms, it is a civic design that is a joy to behold by all visitors.
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Ain't Misbehavin' At Lyric Stage Company Theatre
A Soulful Musical Review In Joyful Harmony
By: - Nov 20th, 2011The special comic and musical soul of 1930s Harlem lives on in this rollicking, swinging show. The music and performances are rowdy, raunchy, and humorous. With great songs, we are embraced by the various moods of the era reflecting the Harlem Renaissance and Fats Waller's view of life. Through his music, Waller's helps us to experience life as a journey meant for pleasure and play. The joint was jumpin'.
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Captivating Captors at Huntington Theatre Theatre
Based on True Story of Capturing Adolph Eichmann
By: - Nov 19th, 2011The World Premiere of Captors at the Huntington Theatre Company is a provocative drama about the capture and immediate aftermath of infamous Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann's captivity. Brilliantly orchestrated to illuminate the interaction between Mossad operatives and fugitive Eichmann as he is attempted to be interrogated. This play wrestles with the issues of good and great evil, the refocus of the world's lens upon the Holocaust and the question of what it means to be a meaningful part of humanity.
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The Back Chamber By Donald Hall Word
Former US Poet Laureate's First Book of Poetry In A Decade
By: - Nov 11th, 2011Rarely giving interviews, former US Poet Laureate Donald Hall agreed to have a conversation with his former University of Michigan student George Abbott White for BFA. On a beautiful sunlit November day, the two sat down at Hall's New Hampshire farm to an extensive dialogue about what went into his life and poetry. This was a special exchange both personally and professionally.
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Building the Revolution Architecture
Soviet Architecture and Art 1915-1935 At Royal Academy
By: - Oct 30th, 2011Examining the Russian avant-garde architecture made during the brief but intense period of design and construction from 1922 to 1935, Building the Revolution is a rare exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in London. The designs were directly inspired by the Constructivist art that emerged in Russia starting around 1915. Architects transformed this radical artistic language into three dimensions, creating structures whose innovative style embodied the energy and optimism of the new Soviet Socialist state. Alas, it did not last very long.
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Boston MFA Embraces Contemporary Decorative Arts, Craft and Design As Major Commitment Design
New Curator and New Dedicated Gallery Space
By: - Oct 29th, 2011The Boston MFA has made a serious commttment to contemporary decorative arts. This has been a cumulative effort by Director Malcolm Rogers over the last decade and half. With the opening of the Linde Family Contemporary Art Wing in October, there was the opening of the first dedicated gallery to contemporary decorative art, the Farago Gallery. To curate this gallery and to integrate contemporary decorative arts, craft and design with the rest of contemporary visual art, the museum hired Emily Zilber as the first contemporary decorative arts curator. And this isn't all.
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John Eric Byers at Gallery NAGA Design
Furniture, Carved Paintings and Production Prototypes
By: - Oct 27th, 2011In a new and much awaited show at Gallery NAGA, Studio Furniture master John Eric Byers is exploring different directions and colors for his elegant and very precise work. Though often simple in form, the sometimes textured pieces are sophisticated objects of desire.
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Before I Leave You At Huntington Theatre Theatre
A Love Story About Second Chances Premieres
By: - Oct 26th, 201172 year old playwright Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro demonstrates that new ideas and creativity are not limited to just the young. Her new play Before I Leave You speaks of love, friendship and disconnection in various funny and sensitive ways. Set at and around Cambridge's Harvard Square, it is a story of academics as flawed members of the human family.
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A Reason to Believe, Lessons from an Improbable Life Word
Governor Deval Patrick @ Boston BookFest, with NPR’s Guy Raz
By: - Oct 16th, 2011Parttime Berkshire resident Governor Patrick Duval has penned a memoir, A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life. In it, he has personalized some aspects of his Horatio Alger life, but not all. He says though temporarily broke he was not poor. His is a lesson of a life lived to the fullest taking advantage of the opportunities and not dwelling on the difficulties.
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The Elegant Apple Design
Steve Jobs’ Design Legacy
By: - Oct 08th, 2011Much has been written about Steve Jobs since his death at 56 on Wednesday October 5. But little has been stated about his major contribution to late 20th Century and early 21st Century design. Not only was Jobs a software and business systems innovator and entrepreneur, but his eye for beauty translated into elegance and inspirational design fostered the development of a series of revolutionary product designs that have influenced the world.
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Candide Highest Grossing Huntington Musical Theatre
Great Production Succeeds Brilliantly At Box Office
By: - Oct 07th, 2011Great box office returns underscore the quality and appeal of the Mary Zimmerman production of Candide at the Huntington Theatre Company. The record for a musical has garnered over $1.5 million dollars. Candide has left audiences amused, entertained and thoughtfully stimulated. Only 12 more performances left.
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Next Fall At SpeakEasy Stage Company Theatre
A Gay Relationship Wrestling With Faith and Disbelief
By: - Oct 02nd, 2011Tony Award nominee (2010) Next Fall is a relationship play about a mismatched gay couple. They are conflicted by one's conservative Christianity and the other's cynical disbelief. The drama considers fundamentalist faith versus atheism, and what constitutes love and sin in a contemporary tough world. Perhaps compelling to a gay audience, the play attempts to portray a universal authenticity. Unfortunately, it does not make the case.
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Confessions of a Serial Killer Stars John Malkovich Theatre
The Infernal Comedy at ArtsEmerson
By: - Sep 29th, 2011A two night stand is not enough to savor John Malkovich's cleverly diabolical malevolent portrayal of serial killer Jack Unterweger. Based on a true story of the Austrian killer who went on to be a literary celebrity with the publication of his autobiography, Purgatory. This is a theatrical hybrid of parts dramatic chiller, dark humor and orchestral concert. This is a strangely brilliant production. John Malkovich is well, John Malkovich--enough said.
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Brilliant Candide At Huntington Theatre Company Theatre
30th Anniversary Begins With Theatrical Electricity
By: - Sep 22nd, 2011Inaugurating its 30th anniversary season, Voltaire's satirical picaresque story with Leonard Bernstein's music has been beautifully presented by the Huntington Theatre Company. This is a full blown show of exquisite pageantry with magnificent singing, musical score, humor, staging and choreography. A true theatrical spectacle, this presentation is a don't miss event.
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Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art Architecture
Museum of Fine Arts Creates Contemporary Home
By: - Sep 17th, 2011Transforming a user-unfriendly I.M. Pei designed (1981) West Wing into a permanent location for its contemporary collection of art, decorative objects and design, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has unveiled a new comfortable setting for visitors. With care and sensitivity, seven new gallery spaces have opened up the possibilities of contemporary art and craft never before presented in such depth and variety by the MFA. Kudos to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
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Paul Ha Named Director of List Visual Arts Center Fine Arts
MIT's Contemporary Art Museum Has New Leadership
By: - Sep 12th, 2011Paul Ha, the current director of the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, has been selected as the new director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) List Visual Arts Center. Mr. Ha is expected to begin his new position Dec. 1.
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9/11: Ten Years After Architecture
Remembering by Design
By: - Sep 11th, 2011After many years and much delay, the 9/11 Memorial was unveiled to the public at the 10th Anniversary of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in NYC. The ceremony was dignified and sadly beautiful; the memorial is a legacy to those who perished. The rest of the structures to be completed on the site may be anticlimactic.
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American Folk Art Museum May Close Architecture
Architecture, High Debt and Bad Choices Cause Crisis
By: - Aug 20th, 2011Founded in 1961 and opened in 1963, the American Folk Art Museum is considered the premier institution in the US devoted to the appreciation of traditional folk art and self-taught "outsider" artists. Unfortunately, about a decade ago, its reach exceeded its grasp. The museum commissioned and built a building that it could not pay for. After having sold its building to the adjacent MoMA to pay off its construction debt and recently moving to much reduced quarters, it now faces closure. Here is a case where more became much less.
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The BMW Guggenheim Lab Architecture
Why A Mobile Urban Laboratory Traveling to Major Cities?
By: - Aug 15th, 2011Continuing to spread its wings around the world, in collaboration with BMW, the Guggenheim Foundation and Museum has embarked upon a six year urban dialogue project that appears to be more about the institutional brand than any ultimate urban product. Opened August 3, the NYC BMW Guggenheim Lab aims at developing new ideas for urban living. The space will host events and programs directed at making the city more livable. The City more livable? With reduced global financial resources and economic pessimism dripping from buildings and streets, there is one major question: Does the Lab really matter?
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Eva Hesse At Institute of Contemporary Art Fine Arts
Studiowork Showcases A Visceral Experimentation
By: - Aug 07th, 2011Eva 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.
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