Museum of Modern Art

ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage closes its second season of adventurous, independent and repertory films with the final entry in Gotta Dance, an ambitious five-month survey of the American film musical; late-period Renoir and the second annual Festival Focus showcase. Films are screened at Emerson College’s Paramount Center (559 Washington St., Boston), in the Bright Family Screening Room.

This June, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston presents the first museum survey of Josiah McElheny. McElheny uses the ancient and labor intensive medium of glass to create objects of exceptional beauty and formal sophistication. An artist of diverse interests, McElheny draws on art history, politics, and cosmology (a branch of astronomy that deals with the structure of the universe) to encode his glassworks with information, turning these exquisite objects into repositories of meaning. A mid-career survey of the artist’s work, Josiah McElheny: Some Pictures of Infinity

The sculptor John Chamberlain passed away recently. On February 24 the Guggenheim Museum opens a retrospective of his work John Chamberlain: Choices. It will remain on view through May 13. The New York museum has posted its schedule through May, 2013.

Williams College today announced the appointment of Christina Olsen as the Class of 1956 Director of the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). Olsen is currently the director of education and public programs at the Portland Art Museum and previously worked at the Getty Foundation and Getty Museum.

Eva Zeisel, one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th Century who created beautifully lyrical yet practical tableware and ceramics, has died at the amazing age of 105. Zeisel estimated that she had designed 100,000 pieces of tableware. Many of her elegant curving organic pieces often appeared to have human qualities, particularly in the way they tended to hug and nestle. These playful, simple designs first produced in the 1940s are still popular.

The Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design announced a significant donation from Bank of America. Pleiades (1982), an important wall-relief sculpture by American artist Lynda Benglis, was recently added to the Museum's collection.

At 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.

The vast survey of some 200 works by Willem de Kooning at the Museum of Modern Art through January 9 potently recalls the era of my formative years when painting was the paradigm and art still mattered. For all of us who studied art in the 1950s and 1960s de Kooning was a God. Recently I worshiped in a temple of his works. But in order to create such horrific, visionary paintings more than likely the artist made a pact that damns him to an after life in purgatory if not hell.

David A. Ross started a career in museums at 20 while still an undergraduate. He became curator of video art for the Everson Museum of Syracuse. His career as a museum director ended abruptly, at 53, in 2001 when he was fired just short of four years at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Currently he lives in Beacn, New York and commutes as chair of the MFA in Art Practice program at New York's School of Visual Arts.

Ninety-four percent of Clyfford Still's output is now housed in a new museum in Denver. The hush hanging over his work has been broken and all the early excitement and praise he received from his peers and critics is proven correct in the paintings exhibited in this extraordinary viewing space.

In 2001 David A. Ross, after a four year "honeymoon" was fired as the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Prior to that he served as director of Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Since departing as a museum director Ross has been a chameleon after decades in the art world with more than nine lives. Today he performs as lead singer with the band Red. His day gig is running a graduate program for the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Directed by Susan Vogel (2011, 53 min.). Filmed over three years in Venice, Nsukka, and the United States, this is a powerful portrait of Africa’s most widely acclaimed contemporary artist El Anatsui. Fold Crumple Crush gives an insider’s view of the artist’s practice, the ingenious steps and thousands of hours of labor that convert used bottle tops into huge, opulent wall hangings. Anatsui explains how his artworks have become a marriage of painting and sculpture—objects that speak of African history but also reach for the ethereal—and he talks about his aspirations for artworks he has yet to make.

Founded 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.

Nelida Nassar provides an overview of cultural offerings for the week of August 15 to 21. From Harvard Film Archives to previews of the anticipated Broadway bound production of Porgy and Bess at American Repertory Theatre.

Trisha Brown’s pioneering dance style is a celebrated cornerstone of modern dance. August 10-14, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival salutes the 40th anniversary of the Trisha Brown Dance Company with a commemorative program of works highlighting Brown’s inventive choreographic range.

For 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.

Otto Piene's close to 800 page monograph, by publisher Ante Glibota of Delight Edition, Paris, was recently introduced at City Hall in Duesseldorf, Germany. Now,a conference, honoring Otto Piene and his life's work, will be held at the Grand Palais in Paris, on May 17. It will be a grand affair!

It has taken longer than I recall, twenty-three years, for a major publication to be presented in Duesseldorf, Germany. The book was printed in Italy with 3000 exquisite illustrations; many photographs were never published before. The text is bilingual, English and German, and includes thirty-seven essays by internationally renowned art historians, art theorists and artists. These, of course, are in addition to Glibota and Piene's essays. The book is presented in 756 pages.

Kate McNamara has been appointed to the position of director and chief curator of the Boston University Art Gallery. She has experience curating at MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY), Cleopatra's (Brooklyn, NY), Ramapo College (Ramapo, NY).

The rituals of the Vienna Actionist, Hermann Nitsch, often entailed slaughtered animals, their blood and entrails, nude bodies and music which he composed. He is planning a major event in New York with the Mike Weiss Gallery.

In this installment, rural critic, Charles Giuliano, and metropolitan critic, Greg Book of the weekly, Boston Phoenix, compare and contrast issues of covering their arts communities. A primary difference is how the arts in the Berkshires are integral to driving the cultural economy. Cook comments on an uneasy relationship between museums and the community of local artists.

The AICA-USA awards ceremony, which has been held annually for more than 25 years, will take place at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art on March 14 2011 at 6 PM. Awards will be presented by a group of distinguished artists and curators. Elizabeth C. Baker will be honored with a special Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Criticism. Museum curators, artists and critics from around the country are expected to attend.

Yet again the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is developing plans for a satellite museum. This time in Helsinki Finland. Former Guggenheim director, Tom Krens, initiated expansionist ambitions. Now they appear to continue under his successor Richard Armstrong.

In one of the most notable exhibitions of the season MoMA installed some 250 works, including a hundred paintings in Abstract Expressionist New York. The project was installed in the fourth floor galleries of its permanent collection. This is a fascinating but flawed overview of the New York School as seen through the narrow lens of generations of the museum's directors, trustees and curators. It has evoked a range of critical responses from praise to outrage.

The US section of the International Association of Art Critics/AICA-USA announces its annual awards to honor artists, curators, museums, galleries and other cultural institutions in recognition of excellence in the conception and realization of exhibitions. The winning projects were nominated and voted on by the 400 active members to honor outstanding exhibitions of the previous season (June 2009-June 2010).