Front Page
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Letter About Charles Giuliano’s Seventh Book
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1870-2020: An Oral History
By: - Nov 05th, 2021The poet and Columbia University professor, Bill Wadsworth is a neighbor and friend. He has been on the road for the past month. I sent an e mail inquiring when next we might enjoy another witty and insightful literary luncheon. His response comprised a critique of my current MFA book. This ‘review’ is posted with his permission.
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War Words
What Does 'Thank You for Your Service' Really Mean
By: - Nov 06th, 2021The Atlantic Council has partnered with professional theater companies, veterans service organizations, and corporate sponsors to bring staged readings of War Words. This Pulitzer Prize-nominated play depicts stories of men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The production is traveling to different cities.
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Iphigenia at MASS MoCA
An Opera by Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding
By: - Nov 07th, 2021Iphigenia, an opera is a cross generational collaboration between 88-year-old jazz legend, Wayne Shorter and the much younger and widely acclaimed performer/ composer esperanza spalding. It was an eight year project that was particularly intensive this past year. After a residence it was presented as "an open rehearsal and work in progress" at MASS MoCA over two nights. It's debut will occur in Boston at ArtsEmerson on November 12 and 13. It will travel from there.
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Warrior Class
Highly-Charged Political Drama at Boca Stage
By: - Nov 09th, 2021The past stalks a candidate for Congress in the gripping political drama, "Warrior Class." The riveting production runs through Nov. 21 at Boca Stage in Boca Raton, Fla. Boca Stage, a professional theater company, is the new name for the former Primal Forces.
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Vermont Blown Away
Demonstration at Brattleboro Museum & Art Center November 21
By: - Nov 09th, 2021“Vermont Blown Away” will take the form of a friendly competition among teams of glass artists. Items from BMAC’s Study Collection of Ancient Objects will be selected to inspire three-person teams to create new glass sculptures. Teams will have 15 minutes to design a piece and one hour to complete it. These glass pieces will be auctioned off at a later date to raise money for the Vermont Glass Guild’s education fund.
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A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim
Produced by 42nd Street Moon at Gateway Theatre
By: - Nov 09th, 2021Although Sondheim’s music and themes often have sharp edges, “A Little Night Music,” which is based on Ingmar Bergman’s film “Smiles of a Summer Night,” is written predominately in waltz time and is highly melodic.
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Falsettoland by William Finn and James Lapine
At Music Theatre of Connecticut
By: - Nov 10th, 2021It is fitting to see this piece in Connecticut; after all in 1991 it was Mark Lamos, the artistic director at Hartford Stage who worked with composer/lyricist William Finn and co-book writer James Lapine to combine Finn’s two short musicals –In Trousers and March of the Falsettos into one more cohesive piece.
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Will Eno Takes on Peer Gynt
GNIT a Delight at Theatre for a New Audience
By: - Nov 12th, 2021Theatre for a New Audience is presenting GNIT, an update of Hendrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt. The new version by Will Eno is daring in its exposition of many characters reaction to the her and their plight.
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Hamlet and Me
The Danish prince and I Go Way Back
By: - Nov 14th, 2021I saw college productions—and I read Hamlet in a memorable Shakespeare course at one of my alma maters, Harvard on the Rocks—the two-year University of Illinois in Chicago at Navy Pier. (Later it became a four-year university and moved to its current campus.) The first Hamlet production that I remember vividly was during the 1963 opening season of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
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Composer Marcus Shelby's Harriet's Spirit
Produced by Opera Parallèle and Bayview Opera House
By: - Nov 15th, 2021Commissioned by Opera Parallèle as part of their Hands-On-Opera program, a series of operas for youth, “Harriet’s Spirit,” is performed appropriately at the Bayview Opera House, which operates as the hub of the San Francisco African American Arts and Culture District. The production energizes and provides a beacon of hope for the communities that its story represents.
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Giuliano at Williams Faculty Club on November 19
To Discuss Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1870 to 2020: An Oral History
By: - Nov 15th, 2021Remarkably, Museum of Fine Arts Boston , 1870 to 2020, by Charles Giuliano is only the second comprehensive history of the MFA. Much has transpired since the centennial publication some fifty years ago. Over those decades the author interviewed directors, curators, trustees and administrators. The museum's great collections as well as issues of elitist exclusion, racism and anti Semitism are conveyed in their own words. The Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements have impacted all of America's cultural institutions. Giuliano will discuss the book at the Williams Faculty Club on Friday, November 19 at 7 PM.
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Dido and Aeneas Composed by Henry Purcell
Produced by Opera San José
By: - Nov 15th, 2021Rarely has an esteemed opera endured the ignominy of its birth as “Dido and Aeneas.” Although its composer, Henry Purcell, would reign as the preeminent producer of serious British music from his death in 1695 until the 20th century, his only pure opera borrowed slavishly from a crypto-opera, John Blow’s “Venus and Adonis,” that has not even remained in the canon.
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Bob Dylan Archive
Opens in Tulsa on May 10, 2022,
By: - Nov 16th, 2021In revealing the existence of the Bob Dylan Archive to the public in 2016, Ben Sisario wrote in The New York Times, "It is clear that the archives are deeper and more vast than even most Dylan experts could imagine, promising untold insight into the songwriter's work." The three-story façade of the Bob Dylan Center will face downtown Tulsa's hugely popular public gathering space, Guthrie Green, and will depict a rare 1965 image of Dylan, donated to the center by renowned photographer Jerry Schatzberg.
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sAiNt jOaN (burn/burn/burn)
Produced by Oakland Theater Project
By: - Nov 17th, 2021Playwright Lisa Ramirez draws on Jean d’Arc’s motive force as the basis for examining the will of young women to effect change in today’s frightening world. Her vehicle is a riveting, uber-energetic, often chaotic and confrontational clash of five young people one fateful night. “sAiNt jOaN” grabs the attention by the throat and throttles it for 60 exciting and exhausting minutes.
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The Band's Visit at the Bushnell
Tony Winner in 2018
By: - Nov 19th, 2021The Band’s Visit is almost a chamber musical; limited cast, no big dance numbers, no flashy sets or projections. It tells a simple story, but one that slowly creeps up on you and, if you let it, packs an emotional wallop. It’s based on a 2007 Israeli film that won critical acclaim and success.
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Middletown: The Ride of Your Life!
A Co-production of Actors' Playhouse, Miracle Theatre and GFour Productions.
By: - Nov 22nd, 2021Middletown: The Ride of Your Life! is a touching and humorous tale of friendship, life's joys, and difficulties. Actors' Playhouse and GFour Productions is presenting the comedy-drama through Dec. 12. The play reminds us how we missed in-person human interaction and connection during the pandemic.
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Cullud Wattah at the Public Theater
Powerful Public Issue Dramatized
By: - Nov 21st, 2021The Public Theater Presents Cullud Wattah, a timely social protest drama written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Candis C. Jones Adam Rigg (scenic design) creates a set full of profound contradictions. They weave through the drama on every level. A cozy furnished home of a working class African-American family is surrounded by a macabre curtain of plastic bottles of dirty water.
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Duncan Macmillan's Lungs
A New City Players Production
By: - Nov 21st, 2021Ft. Lauderdale-based New City Players presents Duncan Macmillan's drama, Lungs, in an uneven production running through Nov. 28. In Macmillan's play, a couple are trying to decide whether to have a baby in a world plagued by many problems. Lungs, which runs less than two hours with no intermission, speaks to a new generation of folks for whom uncertainty has become the norm.
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Cullud Wattah at the Public Theater
Powerful Public Issue Dramatized
By: - Nov 22nd, 2021The Public Theater presents Cullud Wattah, a timely social protest drama written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Candis C. Jones Profound contradictions are dramatized and shown throughout the drama. Adam Rigg (scenic design) creates a cozy furnished home of a working class African-American family surrounded by a macabre curtain of plastic bottles of dirty water.
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The People Downstairs
A World Premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks
By: - Nov 24th, 2021Palm Beach Dramaworks in South Florida will present the world premiere production of Michael McKeever's new historical drama, The People Downstairs. The play explores the challenges faced by the folks who hid Anne Frank's family during World War II as the Nazis attempted to round up European Jews.The People Downstairs runs from Dec. 3 to Dec. 19 at Palm Beach Dramaworks' playing space in West Palm Beach.
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Arts Fuse Reviews Giuliano's MFA Book
Mark Favermann on Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1870 to 2020: An Oral History
By: - Nov 27th, 2021America's only two encyclopedic museums, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art were both founded in 1870. The Met is larger with an endowment of $3 billion compared to $608 million for the MFA. In aspects of the collection- Asiatic, classical Greek and Roman, Old Kingdom Egypt and Nubia, American art to 1900, prints, drawings and photography, it is second to none. In the area of European painting and French impressionism and post impressionism it ranks with other American museums. Other than the Lane Collection of American modernism the MFA is weak in 20th and 21st century art. It ceased to collect Boston artists when they were dominantly Jewish by the 1930s.
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Vasily Kandinsky at the Guggenheim
Amidst Circles
By: - Nov 27th, 2021The painter Vasily Kandinsky belongs in the Guggenheim Museum. The new show titled "Around the Circle" spirals up to the top of Frank Lloyd Wright's monument.
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If They Should Meet When I’m Not Here
By: - Dec 01st, 2021Sharing morning tea with a squirrel come rain or shine for past eighteen months. Then the bobcat prowled about. Evoking fear of losing a friend. Yet nature is what it is.
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MFA Unveils Renovated Classical Galleries
Contextualized with Works by Cy Twombly
By: - Dec 01st, 2021The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is unveiling an ambitious transformation in the George D. and Margo Behrakis Wing for Art of the Ancient World: five reimagined galleries for the art of ancient Greece, Rome and the Byzantine Empire that tell new stories about some of the oldest works in the MFA’s collection. A gallery of modern and contemporary works located within the wing explores the reception of ancient art by 20th- and 21st-century artists. The first of the multiyear rotations features the works of the modern master Cy Twombly (1928–2011), an alumnus of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
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Hirshhorn Museum Revitalization
Approval for Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Sculpture Garden
By: - Dec 02nd, 2021The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has successfully completed the public consultation process for the revitalization of its Sculpture Garden. The Hirshhorn is the only Smithsonian museum directly integrated into the National Mall. The revitalization project will connect the 1.5-acre garden on the National Mall with the 4-acre plaza surrounding the museum, which welcomes 1 million visitors annually.
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