Museum of Fine Arts

The iconic 1943 Oklahoma, with the magnificent music of Rodgers and Hammerstein would seem to be a shoe in hit for the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfeld. While the production has stunning moments, caveat emptor, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. After five decades the jingoism and heart on the sleeve Americana which wowed audiences during World War II is hardly convincing today.

Like many Americans I was exposed to bushido and the samurai tradition through the films of the Japanese master Akira Kurosawa. My interest in Samurai weapons and armor dates from my first visit to the Museum of Fine Arts as a child. This summer for children of all ages the MFA is mounting the remarkable and thrilling exhibition Samurai Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection.

There are few if any works by Michelangelo in American collections. In February we viewed a single sculpture at the National Gallery. Through June 30 there are 25 drawings from the Casa Buonarroti in Florence on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While modest in scale this is the most extensive exhibition of his drawings since 1988 at the National Gallery. The selection includes eleven figure studies and fourteen architectural works.

This group show honors local artists Sarah Bapst, Katarina Burin, Mark Cooper and Luther Price On the messy, shambolic, expressive side we have the males. These comprise Cooper's organic and crudely handmade sculptural forms and Price's soiled, gritty, gestural abstract slide shows. The women are the cerebral members of this foursome, with Bapst's conceptual take on monochromatic, minimalist sculpture and Burin's dry and deceptively meta-textual installation concerning a forgotten architect.

Although Indiana is a staunchly conservative red state the Indianapolis Museum Art is currently hosting a survey of work by the world's most radical living artist. Ai Weiwei: According to What? will be on view through July 28. There is an encylopedic collection of some 54,000 works. We also visited the nearby 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park which opened in 2010.

The Latino List: Photographs by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders exhibition is a portrait survey of 30 important Hispanic Americans by photographer and documentary filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. The exhibition debuted in 2011 at the Brooklyn Museum. It is on view in Atlanta's High Museum of Art from March 17 through May 19.

In 1995 Xu Bing was invited to visit Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Exploring the area around Durham, he visited the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum, tobacco farms, and the former Liggett & Meyers cigarette factory, experiences that planted the seeds for a body of work that now spans more than a decade. Work by Xu Bing is on view at Mass MoCA for the coming year. We repost this earlier related coverage by permission of Richard Friswell and Arrtes Magazing.

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass announces its schedule of exhibitions for 2013. The program kicks off with Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India after Independence From the Peabody Essex Museum’s Herwitz Collection which will be on view from February 2 through April 21.

It is usual for the world's great museums to swap their masterpieces for special exhibitions. It is the quid pro quo of doing business. Currently, however, an unusually large number of its greatest treasures are missing from the walls of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Some 26 works, however, have been loaned strictly for cash by the entrepreneur Marco Goldin and his for profit organization Linea d’Ombra. In Italy Goldin is known as "The King Midas of the art world." If that's the case what should we call deal maker Malcolm Rogers of the MFA?

On the surface great art seems anarchical. Take Cezanne without whom we cannot even imagine the 20thc language of abstraction. He jumps to another level of seeing that seemed crude and anarchic to those living artist surrounded by the aesthetic of the 19thc, which was a continuation of the once anarchic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio. In fact both artists pursued a deepening of the understanding of what it means to see. They didn’t jump out of the language of seeing; they jumped more deeply into it. I agree that certain holy grails never assure survivability but nor does anarchy. What at first glance seems anarchic is always the product of an exploration of the language of seeing that has found new foundations.

Traditionally one became an artist by apprenticing in the studio of a master. Basic skills and ideas were passed along. L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, or The Academy, was established during the French Revolution to teach artists and architects to design and create buildings and public art paintings and sculptures. In diploma granting artisan programs art schools and conservatories taught the skills to pursue a career as an artist, musician or actor. In recent years this has morphed into the art education industry which self perpetuates by granting more BFA and MFA degrees than necessary. There is more supply than demand.

Sarah Bapst, Katarina Burin, Mark Cooper, and Luther Price were named finalists for the 2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize, the ICA's biennial award and exhibition program for Boston-area artists, the museum announced today. Bapst, Burin, Cooper, and Price will participate in an exhibition organized by Helen Molesworth, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, on view at the ICA from May 1 through July 21, 2013.

Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) opens its 2012/13 Season with a new production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Nov. 2 – 11, 2012, starring soprano Yunah Lee in her BLO debut in her signature role of Cio-Cio San. Performances take place at the Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre (265 Tremont St., Boston.. The production stars soprano Yunah Lee in her BLO debut as Cio-Cio San, a role for which she has received widespread critical acclaim and which Opera News recently declared her “signature role.”

In his most recent body of work at New York's Dodge Gallery, David Cole navigates memory, history, national identity and the interlocking resonance of each. Cole's protean craftsmanship gives voice to both a scholarly knowledge of this nation's past and a conscientious understanding of what it means to be an American today.

Edouard Manet is highlighted in works on paper alongside his own idols of Goya, Rembrandt, Delacroix and Velazquez; connections to his paintings abound in expressive etchings and lithographs. The special exhibition continues at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston through October 28.

In a storefront on Summer Street in Adams, Ma., formerly a clothing store, five years ago the multi media artists Matt Belanger and Marianne Petit opened the alternative Greylock Arts. This summer they are celebrating with an anniversary exhibition including many of the artists from New York and the Berkshires that have been included in their edgy program. Their alternative, artist run space, is, hands down, the best in the Berkshires.

Through September 3 this is the first major museum level exhibition of Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein since his death in 1997. The Art Institute of Chicago is showing 130 paintings and 30 additional works including drawings and sculptures. From Chicago the exhibition travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Modern and, finally, the Centre Pompidou in Paris in fall 2013.

From the Colonial Era through the present Boston has been notable for its passion and commitment to painters. The artist Chawky Freen has succeeded in the daunting challenge of publishing an overview of 100 Boston Painters. This is an invaluable contribution to an aspect of contemporary art in Boston.

The 7th Annual season of The Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) will celebrate this year with the latest in independent feature, documentary, short and family films. The festival runs from May 31 – June 3, 2012 in Great Barrington and June 1 – June 3rd in Pittsfield, MA and will be showcasing over 70 films in independent filmmaking.

The eminent curator and author Edward Maeder will lead a three-day seminar at Berkshire Botanical Gardens (BBG) with lectures on "The Rose in Art and Fashion—700 Years", and "Gardens in the Decorative Arts". The lectures will be followed by hands-on demonstrations and workshops: "Exploring Paper Possibilities with Collage and Floral Inspiration". The events will be held June 12 to 14, at BBG, 5 West Stockbridge Road, Stockbridge, Massachusetts 01262

Between 1893 and 1895, Edvard Munch, 30 when he started the cycle, made four versions of "The Scream." It has proved to be one of the most iconic images of modern art. Three of the paintings are owned by museums in Norway. Two have been stolen and since recovered. The fourth, a pastel version from 1895, the last in private hands, set a new auction record this week at $120 million. That's a lot of cash for high anxiety.

The 7th Annual season of The Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) will celebrate this year with the latest in independent feature, documentary, short and family films. The festival runs from May 31 – June 3, 2012 in Great Barrington and June 1 – June 3rd in Pittsfield, MA and will be showcasing over 70 films in independent filmmaking.

Numerous unique events in Boston this week. Maestro Bernard Haitink leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s warm and ever-popular Pastoral Symphony. Handel and Hayden presents the memorable Mozart Coronation. The Celebrity Series showcases at Jordan Hall: Emerson String Quartet, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra ends its season with Mahler Triumphant! ArtsEmerson presents Hershey Felder in Maestro: Leonard Bernstein while The Luck of the Irish final weeks continue at the Huntington Theatre. The Institute of Contemporary Art presents the 49th Ann Arbor Film Festival of animation and technical innovation.

Beyond King Tut and Cleopatra most folks know little or nothing about the thirty dynasties and 3000 years of Ancient Egyptian Art. The Met's special exhibition The Dawn of Egyptian Art provides a tantalizing encounter with the esoteric era prior to and during the founding dynasties.

A flurry of activities in both Boston and Cambridge this week. Do not miss the Elliot Norton laureate William Kentridge will present his animated films at the Harvard Archives. The Jewish film festival promises a variety of special movies. Maestro Bernard Haitink will conduct at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Institute of Contemporary Art & World Music/CRASHARTS showcases the unforgettable India Jazz Suites: Kathak Meets Tap.