Museum of Fine Arts

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.

The DeCordova Museum,in Lincoln, Mass., which has a mandate to show contemporary art from New England, has changed from an annual to biennial format. It will fill the entire museum and include iconic masters like Otto Piene and Paul Laffoley, and the controversial William Pope L., as well, as a number of emerging artists.

The special exhibition Harry Callahan: American Photographer will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston from November 21 through July 3, 2010. He was a renowned professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. Many of his best known images, including many of his wife, Eleanor, were created in Chicago.

Hank Gilpin is a special type of artist. He is a master of materials, especially the most beautiful of domestic woods. He is a master furniture craftsman. After a career of over 35 years, Gallery NAGA is celebrating Hank Gilpin's special talent in his first gallery ever show. Gallerist Arthur Dion has been asking Gilpin to have a show for over 20 years. He finally said yes.

With Jack Levine and Karl Zerbe the artist Hyman Bloom, who was born in Latvia in 1913, was a founding member of the Boston Expressionists. He recently passed away at 96. Yeshiva University a memorial exhibition, through January 24, 2010, is traveling from the Danforth Museum curated by Katherine French.

Located between the larger and better known artist communities of Pittsfield and North Adams it is easy to overlook the vibrant Adams art scene. We visited and interviewed eight artists in their studios. They are all well established with an intriguing variety of work.

There were books strewn about in the libarary, ice on the floors and broken shutters when Tina Packer and Shakespeare & Company moved into Edith Wharton's The Mount 32 years ago. There was an increasingly contentious relationship with Edith Wharton Restoration Inc. In 2000 S&Co purchased and moved to its current Lenox campus.

During this rainy and mostly miserable summer the exhibition "Dove/O'Keeffe Circles of Influence" at the Clark Art Institute has provided shelter from the storm. Visitors have flocked to this populat exhibition which ends on September 7.

The theatrical lighting designer, Julie Seitel, has curated the exhiition "Illuminati" at the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams, Mass. The switched on theme includes the light artists: Brian Jewett, Marjorie Minkin, John Powell and Richard Harrington as well as Seitel's pieces. It is one of the best shows of the Berkshire summer season.

Greene & Greene, Charles Sumner and Henry Mather, California-based architects/designers whose work became the "gold standard" for Arts and Crafts Style. Their elegant collaboration lasted only a short period, but their design legacy is celebrated by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in a beautifully presented and thoughtfully produced exhibition.

When Igor Stavinsky's ballet "Le Sacre du Printemps," with choreography by Vaslav Nijinski, premiered in Paris with the Ballets Russes on May 29, 1913 it provoked a riot. A light attendance for James Levine conducting at Tanglewood indicates that after almost a century it is still a hard sell. Judging by a standing ovation and encore it was clear that much of the audience had come to hear violinist Christian Tarzlaff perform Brahms.