Fine Arts
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The Clark's Masterpieces Home at Last
On Tour to Eleven Venues on Three Continents for Three Years
By: - Mar 21st, 2014After three years with eleven museums on three continents the treasures of the Clark Art Institute are back home safe and sound. They will be seen this summer when the museum reopens after extensive renovation and expansion on July 4. This grand tour of major museums will reap benefits as the Clark requests loans for major exhibitions. Other major museums, however, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the Guggenheim, have loaned works to their satellites and commercial exhibition promoters for cold cash.
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The Clark Art Institute Embraces Modernism
Pollock's Masterpiece Lavender Mist This Summer
By: - Mar 20th, 2014This week representatives of the Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Mass MoCA met with the media to promote plans for a spectacular Northern Berkshires season. The Clark reopens following extensive expansion and renovation. Mass MoCA offers the first full season of its Anselm Kiefer building. Jenny Gersten has planned a blockbuster program for WTF. WCMA plans special events like a Think and Drink series. In high season it may be hard to book a hotel or dine at the best restaurants.
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Arnold Trachtman Portraits, Galatea Fine Art
Visions Through a Personal Prism
By: - Mar 19th, 2014At 84, Arnold Trachtman is exhibiting a dozen pieces from the last 50 years of his artistic career. Relentlessly he is compelled to express and document history through a vey personal lens. His art never fit the current fad. Arnie never got the memo on the next big wave. Or if he did, he disregarded it. He often combined the past imperfect of the political and social agenda of Europe and the USA in his mostly strident painted images. But the works shown at Galatea Fine Art are more mellow memories yet painted in his most original voice.
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Fernando Botero Seen in Bogota
Colombia's Living Treasure
By: - Mar 17th, 2014Botero's art permeates Bogota's and Medellin's major museums and plazas with overwhelming grandeur and sensuality. Contrasting giant and dwarf figures, sometimes with underlying satire, the artist creates voluptuous exuberance that charms and captivates.
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Cape & Islands Theater Coalition
David B. Kaplan Appointed Executive Director
By: - Mar 11th, 2014The Cape & Islands Theater Coalition announced today that it has created the new position of Executive Director and has appointed David B. Kaplan to fill that post. The members of the Coalition took this step in recognition of the growth of the Coalition and its activities on behalf of the Cape and Islands live performance theaters, and in anticipation of greater collaboration and outreach by the organization. The Coalition is composed of 24 member theaters and a Friends organization which helps raise awareness of our regions theaters and promote theater-going.
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Joe Thompson Expansion Part Two
Economic Impact and Wish Lists
By: - Mar 10th, 2014Massachusetts funded Mass MoCA initially, and now again, as an economic development to drive the creative economy of cultural tourism in the depressed Northern Berkshire County. In addition to the Clark Art Institute expanded and coming back on line this summer, in a few years, Mass MoCA plans to double its exhibition space. A key result of that expansion will be a shift of visitors from day trips to weekends. In this next phase more involvement with the local community, particularly its artists, will be crucial.
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Looking Back with Global Artist Rafael Mahdavi
From Figuration in Painting to Abstract Steel Sculpture
By: - Mar 10th, 2014In 2000 when Rafael Mahdavi was commuting between Wellesley, Mass and a studio in Paris we collaborated on dual exhibitions at Suffolk University/ New England School of Art & Design and Boston's French library. Recently we connected to catch up and reflect on a multi national career as a painter and sculptor. Through hard work and entrepreneurship he has had the life and career that many artists aspire to.
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Not Quite April in Paris
Current Exhibitions
By: - Mar 09th, 2014Our correspondent is in Paris for the annual meeting of AICA (International Society of Arts Critics). Of which he is a board member. He sent links to exhibitions which he plans to check out. We appreciate being kept in the loop.
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Joe Thompson on Mass MoCA Expansion
Part One on Phase Three
By: - Mar 09th, 2014Several months ago we spoke in depth with Joe Thompson about a bill pending on Beacon Hill to grant $25 million toward the final phase of developing the North Adams campus of Mass MoCA. This week, early August, 2014 the bill has been signed by outgoing Governor Deval Patrick a Berkshire neighbor of the museum. Thompson, as he discusses here, must raise an additional $30 million for the project which will take several years.
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Third and Final Phase of Mass MoCA Buildout
Commonwealth's $25.4 Million Kickstart
By: - Mar 06th, 2014With a $25.4 Million grant from the Commonwealth Mass MoCA is embarking on the third and final phase of renovation and development of its 26-building, 600,000 square foot, 16-acre factory campus. Phase III research and concept design work is complete. The project is ready to move construction projected for 2014-2016. This entails 130,000 square feet of gallery space requiring $25 million in state infrastructure grants, plus $30 million in privately raised construction investments, building maintenance reserves, and endowment funding.
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La Biennale de Montréal,
Defining Its Mission
By: - Mar 05th, 2014The mission of La Biennale de Montréal is to foster, support, interpret and disseminate the latest visual arts practices, while raising the international profile of Montréal as a destination of choice for contemporary art. Building on this mission, Uniform has drawn inspiration from the organization’s artistic vision—conveyed by four key terms: experimentation, agility, rigour and openness—to develop the graphic identity of La Biennale de Montréal.
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Malcolm Rogers Another Opinion
Defending Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood
By: - Mar 03rd, 2014David Bonetti started a career as an art critic writing for the Boston Phoenix and Art New England. He moved on to write for daily papers in San Francisco and St. Louis. Now retired from covering fine arts he has returned to Boston. For the past few years he has covered opera for Berkshire Fine Arts with the occasional art piece. In response to our coverage of the retirement of MFA director, Malcolm Rogers, in a letter to the editor he offered a different take. We post it as an op ed piece.
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Malcolm Rogers Resignation Sidebar
Transition of Perry T. Rathbone to Merrill Reuppel
By: - Mar 02nd, 2014The MFA today has been totally rebuilt and defined by Malcolm Rogers. He is resigning after 19 years of dramatic and event brutal change. Part of that transformation is a not so benign neglect of more than a century of institutional and cultural history. The story of the resignation of Rogers was written under pressure of deadline. Since then further research has clarified points raised in the article. More will follow.
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Malcolm Rogers Retires from the MFA
More Autocrat than Aristocrat
By: - Feb 28th, 2014By just two years over Perry T. Rathbone, at 19, the British born Malcolm Rogers is leaving the Museum of Fine Arts as its longest running, most successful and controversial director. From top to bottom he reformed, renovated and rebuilt ever aspect of the museum. Along the way playing a hardball game of croquet worthy of the Queen of Hearts.
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Polish Artist Konrad Smolenski
Caused Buzz at 2013 Venice Biennale
By: - Feb 27th, 2014It would be funny to say that Konrad Smolenski is someone you will soon have heard of. Already a pretty big deal throughout Europe, he had the honor of representing Poland at the Venice Biennale this year and made quite the lasting impression.
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Ai Weiwei a Smash in Miami
Florida Protest Artist Destroys Priceless Vase
By: - Feb 18th, 2014As an act of protest the renowned dissident Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, famously was photographed deliberately dropping and destroying a priceless Han Dynasty vase. Now it appears that in protest an artist has dropped an ancient vessel, painted over by Weiwei, that was included in his traveling exhibition. We explore the many layers of irony that tracks vandalism mimicking the creative destruction of Weiwei. Yet again imitation, however criminal, is the sincerest form of flattery.
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FreePort [No. 007]: From Here to Ear
Musical Performance Art By Birds at Peabody Essex Museum
By: - Feb 18th, 2014Most Performance Art is warmed over conceptual art from three or four decades ago. So when something is truly new and exciting, even intellectually and aesthetically provocative, it should be celebrated. Currently at the Peabody Essex Museum is a performance piece by 70 beautiful finches created by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. It should be seen and heard.
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Darren Waterston at Mass MoCA
Deconstructing Whistler's Peacock Room
By: - Feb 14th, 2014For the past 18 months, while resident in the artist loft Eclipse Mill in North Adams, Darren Waterston has been working on an exacting installation based on Whistler's iconic Peacock Room. We viewed the work in progress with the artist during the intensive final phase of the exhausting project. The work is now completed and on view.
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Hannah Höch at London's Whitechapel Gallery
Pioneer Dadaist of 1920s Berlin
By: - Feb 13th, 2014Using the technique of collage Hannah Hoch was one of the most inventive artists of the absurdist Dada movement in Germany during the 1920s. Her work is being surveyed at London's Whitechapel Gallery. She was condemned by the Nazis and included in Entartete Kunst an exhibition of Degenerate Art.
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Mass MoCA's Oh Canada Tours
Stops Planned for The Maritimes and Calgary
By: - Jan 30th, 2014MASS MoCA's 2012 exhibition of Oh Canada "Art from North North America," is hitting the road. The expansive exhibition, which includes more than 100 works by over 60 artists, will travel to multiple venues across Canada. The exhibition will show in a multi-venue format, on view in The Maritimes from June 27, 2014, through September 21, 2014, and in Calgary from January 31, 2015 through April 26, 2015.
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Barrington Stage Announces Season
20 Strong Years for Pittsfield Based Company
By: - Jan 30th, 2014During a bone crunching cold snap the Berkshire theatre media gathered on stage for a lunch and press conference hosted by Julianne Boyd the artistic director of the now twenty-year-old Barrington Stage Company. In addition to discussing the program for the coming season Boyd confirmed that last summer's hit musical On the Town is headed for Broadway with either a summer or fall opening.
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The Brothers Chapman at London's Serpentine
Jurrasic in Hyde Park
By: - Jan 24th, 2014The ever controversial Jake and Dinos Chapman are at it again in London's Serpentine/ Sackler Gallery. "Come And See" is another of the artists’ exhibitions to be filled with insalubrious gore and crude hyper-reality. This is the classic art dialectic of vanitas; birth, death, sex, horror … and of course McDonald’s.
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Visiting Smith College Museum of Art
Thoughts on Grunewald, Bouts and Jaune Quick-To-See- Smith
By: - Jan 24th, 2014To celebrate the birthdays of Astrid Hiemer and Norma Leavy, just a week apart, we drove to the Smith College Museum of Art. Jack, an artist who knows the collection well, called ahead for an appointment to see the only drawing in North America by Mathias Grunewald the German Renaissance master of the Isenheim Altarpiece. I was excited to find a painting by my friend Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith in the permanent collection.
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Israeli Izhar Patkin Debates Jewish Art
Secular Narratives When God Is Dead
By: - Jan 21st, 2014During a dialogue with the artist Izhar Patkin about his Mass MoCA exhibition David Ross hit a dead end when he asked whether there is a Jewish art? At this point in post modernism, with more than a century since Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Chaim Soutine or Amedeo Modigliani, it is not a question that one would ask a Jewish American artist. But is it relevant for an Israeli Sabra?
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Izhar Patkin's Space Time Continuum
The Wandering Veil at Mass MoCA
By: - Jan 19th, 2014In the vast space of Building Five, for the coming year, Mass MoCA is hosting a retrospective for the Israeli born artist Izhar Patkin. A series of rooms features Veils inspired by the poems of a collaborator, the deceased Pakistani poet, Agha Shahid Ali. The artist is challenged by solving technical problems for a variety of approaches to painting in sculpture in a range of media. Central to his practice is a commitment to modernist inspired narratives devoid of the irony of post modernism.
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