Museum of Fine Arts

Originally when it was founded in 1903 the Busch Reisinger Museum used plaster casts of Gothic art and architecture, photographs and documents to teach Germanic culture to Harvard students. By the 1930s and 1940s it started to acquire original works. Today the museum represents one of the great collections of this Northern and Eastern European material.

There was a lively opening of the new season at the recently refurnished Gallery of the Eclipse Mill in North Adams. Among the guests was Michael Conforti director of the nearby Clark Art Institute.

Mixing art and antiques in a super sized space brings new life to retail in North Adams. A shot in the arm for Main Street traffic.

Rachel Perry Welty was one of four finalists for the biannual Foster Prize awarded by the Institute of Contemporary Art. The competition entailed one woman installations during the widely covered launch of the new ICA. Over a beer we discussed the hectic pace of the past several months and what comes next.

According to the curator and Danforth Museum director for six months during the 1940s and two years after that Hyman Bloom was the most important artist, first in the world, and then in America.

More response to the collection of essays "Critical Mess: Art critics and the state of their practice." And a reply to a Peter Plagens piece on critical writing in the February, 2007 issue of Art in America.

In a collection of essays by leading art critics the eroding influence of their work is discussed. While the arguments and issues are urgent they also seem quite ancient.

How Raymond Liddell was given an "offer he could not refuse" while in graduate school for Classical studies to become director of the Museum of Broadcasting in New York before moving on to the Brooklyn Museum. Today he is among other things a Contributing Editor for Art New England.

In a week of record January temperatures it seemed that Spring had sprung during a lively night of openings in the SOWA, or Boston's South End Gallery District.

Overcome by ennui at the prospect of coming up with that annual best and worst list.

Beer and Burger with photographer, writer, and director of the Boston University graduate program in arts adminstration. For many years we were colleagues and columnists for Art New England.

After the Armory Show of 1913 where his painting "Nude Descending the Staircase" was a sensation Duchamp declared that paintings is "too retinal." It has died and been reborn countless times since then most recently in reviews of Brice Marden at MoMA and Cecily Brown at the MFA.

A look at the works of Residents at the Contemporary Artists Center from the past year at Gallery 51. An overview of the work.

An invitation to serve as juror for the annual graduate student exhibition of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston also allowed the opportunity to view the gorgeous exhibition Lois Mailou Jones: The Early Works: Paintings and Patterns 1927-1937.