Museum of Fine Arts

Now that we have slogged through the Holidays there is a lot of new theatre and music to enjoy. This month Huntington Theatre opens Ruined. Over in Cambridge ART focuses on visionary architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Emerson has a range of events at its Majestic and Paramount theatres. We have tips and links for information and tickets.

Every two years, the Institute of Contemporary Art chooses an emerging artist to recognize by celebrating their work and awarding them $25,000. This year's winner of the James and Audrey Foster Prize is Anie Siegal. Siegel works in 16mm and 35mm film, video, photography, sound, and writing. She often uses cinematic images as a material means to a conceptual end. For the ICA's 2010 Foster Prize exhibition, Siegel created Black Moon, a 20-minute film accompanied by prints of individual frames from the film.

Alexis Ann Rosacso was born in North Adams and grew up in Williamstown. After a BFA from Tufts University and the Museum School she is back in the Berkshires shooting a film she wrote and stars in. With director/ producer, Christopher D. Grace, co star, Kaio Wilker, and musician CJ Fields they met with artists of the Eclipse Mill to discuss the project.

Throughout the new Art of the Americas Wing at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the curators have integrated the beautiful and often seminal objects of specific time periods into the displays. These objects often compare vividly to the great paintings and sculpture that they are grouped with. The quality of these objects, often objects of desire, is often brilliant and sometimes even breathtaking. A sampling of a few is not enough to understand the breath and depth of the MFA's astounding collection. Revisiting the museum is necessary. The greatness of the collection is now better seen than ever at the MFA's new wing.

It’s there for all to see in the thrilling new wing for the Art of the Americas, a museum within a museum. It’s so good it might make you fall in love with American art all over again.  

In certain aspects of its collection, Old Kingdom Egypt and Asiatic Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is a world class museum. With the creation of the Art of the Americas wing the museum hopes to rank second to none among American museums. But, as the Bard would say, "What's in a name?" A closer look reveals formidable depth and glaring gaps in the attempt to cover 3,000 years of art on two continents.

The British born director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Malcolm Rogers, has worked over the past decade with architect, Lord Norman Foster, to expand the museum by some 28%. During an era of economic downturn Rogers oversaw raising $504 million for construction, acquisitions, conservation and programming for the new Art of the Americas wing. It was launched with a dedication and media event. It is anticipated that attendance will spike over the next year putting millions into the local economy.

After much anticipation and over a decade of planning, fundraising, design and construction, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has opened to great fanfare its new Art of the Americas Wing. Under the guidance of Director Malcolm Rogers and the design of Foster+Partners, the new wing adds 27% new space to the building, creatively installed galleries and a refreshed experience for the MFA visitor. This is a stunning addition to a great cultural institution.

One of the most acclaimed and beloved studio craftsman of the last few decades, Judy Kensley McKie continues to produce works of profound grace and sublime quality using imaging and abstraction derived from geometry, animals and plants. In her new exhibition at Boston's Gallery NAGA, she enlivens simple objects by giving them life and spirit. Her pieces are not just beautiful objects but resonating visual narrations.

As a social and political satirist Jack Levine took no prisoners. Now dead at 95 Levine, a founding member of the seminal Boston Expressionist, outlived infamy by decades. In his prime, Levine, who moved to New York after WWII, created some of the riveting icons of American Art. He is represented only with minor works in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

The then young Mike Curb, CEO of MGM Records, hyped an ersatz movement in the 1960s, the ill fated Bosstown Sound. The bands of that era performed at the Boston Tea Party in the South End. The folk music scene in Cambridge focused on Club 47 on Mount Auburn Street. As America was drawn into the Vietnam War David Wilson recalls a shift to radical politics and the protest movement.

When the Boston Expressionist Hyman Bloom (March 29, 1913 to August 26, 2009) passed away none of his works were on view in the major New England museums. Bloom, his partner Jack Levine, and Karl Zerbe were the leaders of what is regarded as the most significant and influential movement of artists in Boston during the 20th century. Their neglect has been a scandal for Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. We are informed that a work by Bloom will be hung in the new wing of the MFA which opens in November. It remains to be seen how the museum will treat Levine and Zerbe. The MFA owns a minor work by the still living Levine which it acquired through the WPA.

The American Repertory Theatre opens the musical The Blue Flower by Jim and Ruth Bauer at the Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square, Cambriidge. Under the direction of Will Pomerantz it brings to life the German artists of the end of World War I that emerged from devastation and chaos to form the movements of Expressionism and Dada that morphed into Surrealism. The production opens on December 1 with previews and runs through January 8.

A career as an art critic started in Boston at The Phoenix. Some years ago David Bonetti departed for San Francisco where he wrote for The Chronicle and the Examiner. When they merged he moved on to the St. Louis Post Dispatch from which he has retired and returned to Boston. He reports on an extended visit to Buenos Aires with particular attention to its eclectic museum collections. We welcome him as a friend and colleague who will occasionally be writing from Boston.

Boston correspondent Barbara Brilliant offers a selection of highlights of arts and entertainment for October. We are moving into high season with many options for audiences.

The Harvard Art Museums present their line-up of fall programs, including gallery talks about Perisan art, American landscape painting, British art, conservation, contemporary sculpture, ancient Greek mythology, and Italian Renaissance art. The In-Sight lecture series returns with evenings dedicated to Alfred Stieglitz, the recently acquired “Barberini Faun” sculpture, the Statue of Meleager, and Max Beckmann. The popular Stories series returns this Octoberâ€"dedicated to the epicâ€"with separate sessions designed for family and adult audiences.

After 6500 miles and 33 days, we returned home ! We had traveled through more than ten states, visited many museums and other cultural sites. We saw America's natural wonders, spent lovely days with old friends and met many interesting people along the way. Please follow us through our journey via photos and entries in my diary.

Picasso Looks at Degas is among the best exhibitions currently on view in American museums. It remains at the Clark Art Institute until September 12. This is its only American venue before it travels to Barcelona.

Black and white has never looked so self-sufficient, so complete, so influential or so lovely, in print after luscious large-scale print in a show sponsored by the nascent Richard Avedon Foundation, just beginning to carry out its mandate to present the artist's work, maintain an archive and support and inspire young photographers since his passing in 2005.

This show of recent acquisitions from the last 6 years of collecting by the Museum of Fine Arts is full of small gems, and one big one. Does it hint of more substantial works to come in the East Wing this fall?

From June 17 to September 19, 2010, in the Contemporary Art Square on Level S2 of the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will present Drive End, a remarkable photographic project by Martin Beauregard. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in a museum.

The Longwood Symphony Orchestra which is made up of medical professionals will perform at Ozawa Hall in Lenox for the first time. The Boston Jewish Film Festival ENCORES AND MORE will be staged at the Museum of Fine Arts through June 27. Don't miss The Great American Trailer Park Musical at Speakeasy Stage.

When Bitches Brew was released, changing and updating jazz, I was a music critic for the daily Boston Herald Traveler. As such I got to hang with Miles starting with a memorable late night interview after a set at Lennie's on the Turnpike. Jay Leno was a frequent warmup act at Lennies. There is an exhibition devoted to Miles at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts through the end of August.

Petah Coyne's baroque works, delicately combining tinted, waxed flowers and taxidermy, will rise up from the floor, and hanging sculptures will descend from the ceiling, taking full advantage of the multiple vantage points of MASS MoCA's vast gallery spaces. The exhibition titled Everything That Rises Must Converge (after a short story by Flannery O'Connor) will open at Mass MoCA on Saturday, May 29, with an opening reception from 5-7 PM.

During his years in Boston the exhibitions of the Mario Diacono gallery were legendary. The Italian born poet, curator and critic generally displayed a single work. The projects which entailed renowned international artists were accompanied by detailed and complex critical essays. Some 30 of these essays have now been published by his Italian patron.