Museum of Fine Arts

When Bitches Brew was released, changing and updating jazz, I was a music critic for the daily Boston Herald Traveler. As such I got to hang with Miles starting with a memorable late night interview after a set at Lennie's on the Turnpike. Jay Leno was a frequent warmup act at Lennies. There is an exhibition devoted to Miles at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts through the end of August.

Petah Coyne's baroque works, delicately combining tinted, waxed flowers and taxidermy, will rise up from the floor, and hanging sculptures will descend from the ceiling, taking full advantage of the multiple vantage points of MASS MoCA's vast gallery spaces. The exhibition titled Everything That Rises Must Converge (after a short story by Flannery O'Connor) will open at Mass MoCA on Saturday, May 29, with an opening reception from 5-7 PM.

During his years in Boston the exhibitions of the Mario Diacono gallery were legendary. The Italian born poet, curator and critic generally displayed a single work. The projects which entailed renowned international artists were accompanied by detailed and complex critical essays. Some 30 of these essays have now been published by his Italian patron.

The group exhibition Natural Selections opens on Friday, April 23 at Greylock Arts in Adams, Mass and remains on view through June 5. The project includes Christian Cerrito, Charles Giuliano, Alex Kauffmann, Henry Klein, David Lachman, Michelle Vitale Loughlin, Jeremy Rotsztain, Martha Denmead Rose, Gregory Scheckler. It has been curated by the artists Marianne Petit and Matt Belanger. The exhibition explores aspects of responses to nature by a range of contemporary artists.

It was a busy weekend of vernissages in the Berkshires. On Friday night the Eclipse Mill Gallery presented sculpture by Len Poliandro, and paintings by Dawn Nelson. On Saturday Jeff Hudson opened a show of his landscapes at Hudson's an antiques store and gallery in Williamstown. On Friday, save the date, Greylock Arts in Adams will open a new exhibition.

Following up on its museum level 2008 exhibition, Zero NY, the Sperone Westwater Gallery in Chelsea is featuring one of the founders of group Zero, Otto Piene. The focus is on seminal work including paintings, works on paper and light sculptures from 1957-1967. Piene has shown at documenta, the Venice Biennale, and the Munich Olympics. He is Professor Emeritus at MIT where he was director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS).

Dr. Barnes hired the best Philadelphia Lawyers he could to protect his collection in Merion, PA from the Philadelphia Main Line toffs and phonies. Yet, somehow the estimated $25 billion collection of Modern and Post-Impressionist masterpieces has been appropriated through politics, power, wealth and subterfuge. This well-crafted documentary by Don Argott shows what, how and where it happened.

It started as a series of dinners in the homes of the artist, Jane Lund, and curator/ appraiser, E. Linda Poras. The annual gathering initially moved to the Lord Jeffrey Inn in Amherst. For the past two years it has been convened at the Deerfield Inn. Recently we joined some 60 others in the Pioneer Valley arts community of Western Mass. We also got to explore the fascinating history of the village and its Colonial era architecture.

The Neue Galerie in New York organized the first American retrospective of the German artist Otto Dix (1891-1969). The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. While the New York installation was widely viewed as a mess the exhibition had a profound impact. Many critics and publications list the Dix survey as among the best exhibitions of 2010.

The low key, scaled back, modest and manageable Whitney Biennial 2010 curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari has been dubbed the Obama Biennial. He is even on the cover. The Whitney has used this occasion to reflect on its history and critical reception since the series started in 1932. It begs questions about its mandate, the status of American art, and its relationship to a former partner, the Museum of Modern Art.

Winter finally moves into Spring, Daylight Savings Time and NCAA Basketball March Madness are now being joined by a museum madness in Boston. News keeps coming about new museums promised, contracted and postponed in the Hub of the Universe. It is the Great Recession, resources are limited and apparently so are a lot of folks involved in the pursuit of the creation of new museums with or without actual buildings, collections or financial support. Does ego trump resources?

Gallery NAGA is presenting a spectacular benefit exhibition, for the North Bennet Street School to celebrate its 125th anniversary. Founded in 1885 in Boston's North End to teach crafts – bookbinding, locksmithing, cabinetry, the making of musical instruments to immigrants, it has a long and distinguished history of training skilled craftsman. Twenty-seven studio furniture artists from throughout the country, including many of the most storied names in the field of studio furniture, are in the show. Generously, the artists and the gallery are donating 50% of the works' selling prices to the school.

Our neighbors to the North, the Province of Quebec, have a tradition of culture and regional cultural awareness. Their filmmakers are a strong and vibrant creative voice internationally. Currently, being presented at the Boston Museum of fine Arts is a series of fascinating and provocative films from Quebec. The festival began with "It's not me, I swear." This is a brilliantly made and acted film about a young boy seemingly from Hell.But is he really? It is an unexpected treat.

Sacred and Profane: Eye of the Beholder, at the Portsmouth Museum of Fine Art in Portsmouth, NH remains on view through April 24, 2010. The exhibition features the work of 35 artists and explores concepts of the sacrilegious and sacrosanct in a broad context.

Back in the day the Berkshire Museum, the oldest in the region, collected everything from soup to nuts. The museum's director, Stuart Chase, is challenged to find projects drawn from a vast collection of 30,000 objects. The interactive exhibitions are fun for families and instructive for 13,000 annual visiting students.

This is the second annual award list organized by Greg Cook the publisher/ editor of The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research. A gala celebration was held at the Burren in Somerville. You had to be there.

Joe Finnegan, a former Wall Street floor trader, who evokes the heart-throb, Don, in TV's Mad Men, moved his family four years ago to Williamstown. He hooked up with boyhood friend Steve Lawson to become President of his Williamstown Film Festival. We talked with Finnegan about gearing up for his first season as General Manager of the prestigious but challenged Williamstown Theatre Festival.

First established in 1999, the James and Audrey Foster Prize (formerly the ICA Artist Prize) recognizes Boston-area artists of exceptional promise. The biennial program creates a significant opportunity for locally-based artists to exhibit their work in a leading contemporary art museum, and offers a substantial financial award of $25,000 to the winner. This year there are nine finalists ranging from photographers to sculptors to painters to filmmakers and mixed media artists.

Unlike many other cities, Boston has no structured program for encouraging public art. There is no ordinance for a percentage of construction budgets and no major designated funding sources for public art. Artists working on a large scale generally must fend for themselves. This past Fall, an ambitious competition was held to create a longterm temporary exhibit of public art in East Boston's Harbor Shipyard. The result may give a shot in the arm to public art in New England's largest city.

The 2010 DeCordova Biennial, under new director, Dennis Kois, has parted from its prior annual format. It has also progressed to a mix of master artists like Otto Piene and Paul Laffoley, established artists, William Pope.L and Liz Nofzinger, and the usual blend of emerging artists. In all the museum is displaying 17 artists from all six New England states.

The special exhibition "Extinct! Endangered Species & Habitats" includes students and faculty of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It will be on view at the Brush Art Gallery and Studios, in Lowell, Mass. through February 21. There will be a talk by science writer Deborah Cramer on January 30.

From February 4 through June 6, 2010, the Portland Museum of Art will present Objects of Wonder: Four Centuries of Still Life from the Norton Museum of Art, an exhibition comprised of more than 50 works of art in various media. The exhibition will feature artists as well known as they are diverse, including Gustave Courbet, Henri Matisse, William Harnett, Marsden Hartley, Edward Weston, Marc Chagall, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Recently the Museum of Fine Arts acquired three paintings by the African American artist Felrath Hines. For most of his career he worked as a framer and then as one of America's foremost painting restorers. After his death in 1993 he was twice shown at New York's June Kelly Gallery. Works from the estate have been acquired by major art museums.

In the art world equivalent of musical chairs Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art has snatched its new chief curator, Helen Molesworth, from Harvard. Not long ago the ICA lost a young curator, Jen Mergel, to the MFA. What next in these musical chairs with an empty seat at Harvard which has put on indefinite hold its plans for a new modern/ contemporary museum.

Only the Metropolitan Museum of Art has the clout to secure loans of the most iconic narrative paintings of American art from the Colonial Period to the beginning of World War One. It may be the most ambitious and comprehensive survey of American art ever assembled. The exhibition is on view at the LA County Museum of Art February 28 to May 23.