Museum of Fine Arts

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.

The Museum of Fine Arts is known to have the finest collection of Old Kingdom Egyptian art outside of Cairo. Its greatest treasure, which it acquired through shrewd negotiation in 1927, is the limestone, polychromed portrait bust of Prince Ankhaf. Egypt wants it back. The MFA response is more or less, bloody hell.

During the dog days of Summer, here are some interesting leads on entrainment and culture for the week of Augst 8 for those of you hanging out in Boston. Summer in the City may simmer, but there are many cool things to do in Boston.

Boston Calendar of Events. Welcoming a new feature of Berkshire Fine Arts. Clip and save.

The MFA's Fall season this year will be as change-making as last year's. The entire West Wing will be transformed to a contemporary art museum, featuring art from 1970 to the present. In the special exhibition galleries, "Degas and the Nude" should be one of the most important shows of the year internationally.

Last given in 2006, the Maud Morgan Prize was initially established as a purchase prize for under recognized midcareer women artists. The MFA has been criticized for nor awarding this prize by the local community. It has now been slightly changed to be a direct cash prize of $10,000 rather than the initial $5000 purchase prize. Another change is that recognition will now be given to more distinguished women artists. A small MFA exhibit of the artist's work is part of the prize. This year's recipient, Wendy Jacob combines high purpose with sculptural forms.

During a drive around Newport, Rhode Island's famed Cliff Walk one encounters not just those fabulous cottages of the Gilded Age but also the armed fortress of the Patriaca clan. It is not a tourist attraction and drive by fast if you know what's good for you. With its craggy coast of nooks and crannies from early on it has been a smuggler's paradise and now a haven for mavens, Best known for fabulous jazz on a summer's day and lots of other cool stuff. We have a complete cheat sheet with contact info. Clip and save for a glorious getaway from the steamy city. The Vanderbilts traveled by yacht but you can get there with a car.

Today, Brandeis University president, Fred Lawrence stated in part "I am very pleased to inform you that Brandeis and the four plaintiffs involved in the Rose Art Museum litigation have reached an agreement to settle the case. As a result, their claims have been dismissed. In addition, the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General has officially terminated its review of Brandeis." The Rose will remain open.

This summer Arrowhead, the Pittsfield historic site and former home of Herman Melville is presenting its first ever special exhibition of contemporary art "Reflections on Melville." Inspired by the collaboration of Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne this is a project by the painter Arthur Yanoff and the photographer Kay Canavino. A second part of the project will be on view starting June 24 at the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams.

Forty years later to the day a group of Boston artists, organized by Boston Phoenix art critic, Greg Cook, recreated a preemptive strike on the uptight and stuffy MFA. In a roto rooter event artists hung their works in the male and female rest rooms of the venerable Fenway dowager. The exhibition and reception was busted, rather politely, after just twenty hilarious minutes. But 21 artists can now put the MFA on their resume. Three of the artists, Robert Guillemin (Sidewalk Sam), David Raymond, and Jo Sandman reprieved their original participation. The big question focused on whether or not the MFA has really changed over the past 40 years?

In 1971 six local artists hung their work in the MFA's men's room to bring attention to the museum's indifference to local living artists. Does a repeat performance have the same meaning today? The same night that the Bruins won their first Stanley Cup in 40 years a group of Boston artists and critics missed the game. They were reenacting the anniversary of another memorable event.

During the era of radical unrest and social change in the 1960s, the black listed professors of McCarthyism nurtured a generation of activists. Brandeis became notorious for the number of its graduates on the FBI Most Wanted lists. That greatly changed growth and philanthropy for the university. It had a significant impact on the Rose Art Museum and its limited resources. Then the Rose family gave $500,000 to start an acquisition fund and Belz initiated a series of annual exhibitions of a major artist,

Exploring with inflatables since the early 1960s, the multidimensional artist Otto Piene has been dazzling viewers with spectacular kinetic gestures of floating form, structure and line. On May 7, Piene's Sky Art piece was part of the culminating event of the FAST Festival. With the assistance of a group of artists, students and MIT alumni, Piene's environmental art flew as a brightly lit star over Killian Court. However, Otto Piene is a world class artist that has not been properly recognized.

Fed up with its lack of interest in contemporary art on June 15, 1971 a group of Boston artists organized a top secret exhibition Flush with the Walls in the Men's Room of the Museum of Fine Arts. It scared the crap out of then director Perry T. Rathbone. Fearing further guerrilla attacks shortly after the infamous stunt the museum appointed Kenworth Moffett as its first curator of Contemporary Art.

While George Wein is renowned for his jazz and folk festivals it is less widely known that he and his late wife, Joyce, were major collectors of African American Art. The works were shown at Boston University, Wein's Alma Mater, curated by Patricia Hills. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston bought seven major pieces from Wein to install in its Arts of the Americas wing.

While attending Boston University on the GI Bill seven nights a week, and Sunday afternoon, George Wein earned a living playing jazz piano. Eventually he started a nightclub featuring his own band. Then Wein booked George Shearing for a week at Storyville and the jazz club took off. Later that led to an invitation from the Lorillards to help found the Newport Jazz Festival.

The third conference, presented byTransCultural Exchange in Boston, closed on Sunday, April 10 to great applause for director, Mary Sherman, sponsors, board members, staff and volunteers. It was again a phenomenal effort with participants from around the world. If you were not in the position to attend the conference, but have ambitions to exhibit or work internationally, or attend national or international retreats, residencies or symposia, please also read this article. It includes a number of hyperlinks to organizations and websites for easy research.

Unquestionably Dale Chihuly has entirely revised and updated the ancient medium of blown glass. Literally, visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts will be blown away by gallery after gallery of spectacular sculptural installations. But all that glitters is not gold. Even ringmaster Malcolm Rogers of the MFA can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Our Boston correspondent Barbara Brilliant provides a dense schedule of arts events in Boston. The listings provide capsule and links for box office connections. Events range from Hair and Educating Rita to a complete breakdown of the Boston Pops.

Appropriately titled: ‘The Interconnected World’ the conference will be held from April 7 – 10. Mary Sherman, the TransCultural Exchange director, again will bring together global speakers and participants in a chock-full four day long conference. Interactive panel discussions, exhibitions, music events, book and poetry readings, portfolio reviews, workshops demystifying subjects and much more will offer new opportunities in the US and world-wide organizations at an ever greater event.

For its size the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute is regarded as one of the finest and best endowed regional museums. Now in another phase of expansion, the Clark is also endowing positions and selling a Renoir for $15 million. The sale of a "redundant' Renoir, as chief curator, Richard Rand describes it, will be use for yet to be determined acquisitions. In a depressed art market, it is an opportune time to have cash on hand.

Now an annual affair at the MFA, the Quebec Film Festival is an exceptional ambassador for the creative cinematic artistry of the Province of Quebec. The opening night film, The Salesman by a gifted young writer/director is about an older (67) perennial car salesman of the month. The salesman takes great satisfaction in the act of the sales, the ritual of persuasion. With no happy outcomes, this is a film about a particular life in a particular place to ponder for a long time.

Aso O. Tavitian, a trustee of the Clark Art Institute and resident of New York and Stockbridge only started to collect Old Master portraits in the past several years. A selection of his acquisitions are included in the fascinating exhibition Eye to Eye European Paintings 1450-1850 which is on view through March 27.

In a series of interviews Berkshire Fine Arts is exploring the arts and cultural community in Boston from the 1960s through the present. Photographer and Boston University professor, Daniel Ranalli, has been working and exhibiting in Boston since the 1970s. Initially the only commited gallerist was the late Carl Siembab. It was also the era of Minor White and a legendary program at MIT and the collection of the Polaroid corporation in Cambridge.

Can one be a servant of two masters? What happens when art critics Greg Cook of the Boston Phoenix and Charles Giuliano of Berkshire Fine Arts wear more than one hat as artists and curators. This installment of their extended dialogue focuses on Giuliano's epxeriences working with artists as director of exhibitions for New England School of Art & Design at Suffolk University.