Museum of Fine Arts

Matisse’s collectibles had a profound influence on his creative choices. Allowing us a priceless opportunity to see how the artist’s mind worked and the ways his creative process unfolded, this magnetic exhibition at the MFA Boston allows us to examine them in relationship to his art. As its only North American venue, Matisse in the Studio will only visit Boston.

Boston Baroque's "Giulio Cesare" marked the role debut of soprano Susanna Phillips as Cleopatra in this tale of love and war with Cleopatra and Julius Caesar its central protagonists. Full of ravishing arias and ensembles, the opera is almost an embarrassment of riches. Boston Baroque did it justice if not in the elusive definitive production it deserves.

Alan Fink met his artist wife, Barbara Swan, in Paris where he lived for three years on just $700. They married in 1952 and relocated to Boston. There he went to work for the next 16 years at Boris Mirski Gallery. In 1967 he founded Alpha Gallery now run by their daughter Joanna. Their son Aaron is an expressionist painter.

For a period of time in the late 1960s I worked in the studio of Pop artist James Rosenquist. He passed away recently at 83. When Jim first arrived in New York he painted billboards high above Times Square. He later used those techniques as a key but undervalued Pop artist.

Since June, 2014 Berkshire poet, Charles Giuliano, has published three books of gonzo verse. A fourth is in production for a summer release. On Tuesday April 18, at 7:30 P.M. he will give a reading at the Williams Faculty Club (WFC), 968 Main Street, Williamstown, MA 01267. The event is free and open to the public.

When the Institute of Contemporary Art opened its waterfront home there were awards for the dramatic design by Diller Scofido and Renfro. Immediately, however, it was obvious that with 65,000 square feet, and just its top floor for exhibitions, there was no plan for expansion and growth. For the next five to ten years the ICA is leasing a 15,000 square foot industrial place in East Boston. Visitors will commute by ferry to the seasonal Watershed which opens in the summer of 2018.

Five Boston museum directors have signed a letter of concern over reports that the National Endowment for the Arts is under threat of being abolished, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Under the conservative agenda of the Trump adminsitration this is an attack on the arts in America. Guarding the Trumps in NY, DC and Palm Beach for a week is on a par with endowment support.

London's newly opened Design Museum is the world's leading museum devoted to contemporary design in every form from architecture and fashion to graphics, product and industrial design. The Design Museum is now open in its spectacular new location on High Street Kensington. It is now a major venue to visit in London.

In three concurrent New York gallery exhibitions- Lisson, Mary Boone and Jeffrey Deitch- the dissident Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, has created poignant and roiling new works. This is a massive project by arguably our greatest living artist.

The vast Khovsgol Lake region in northern Mongolia is home to numerous nomadic herders. As their grazing horses, yaks, and reindeer grace the shores, picturesque gers for locals and visitors add to the pastoral charm. Gobi Desert in the south fascinates with its valleys, sand dunes, ochre-colored cliffs, and the unique two-humped Bactrian camels.

Dyno rockers Jeff and Jane Hudson will present an (ahem) New Wave Party at the Williams Inn on November 19. The vintage punk rockers are promoting their latest release The Middle which combines new and old material. Until recently they operated an antiques store at Mass MoCA. Jane is a legendary genius while Jeff is generally viewed as a piece of work. Together they make strange and rhapsodic music. Never miss one of their iconic events.

My friend Jim Jacobs can do just about anything, physical or mental, when he sets his mind to it.

During the 1970s Kenworth Moffett, while a full professor at Wellesley College, was hired part time as the founding curator for contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts. After a long illness he passed away at the age of 81. Long after our days as aesthetic adversaries we remained friends. During annual visits to Palm Beach we would meet for lunch in Ft Lauderdale where he was director of its museum. In 2015 we collaborated on an extensive interview which is linked to this obituary.

Rodin was the first truly "modern" sculptor. His work was an evolving process in creating figurative pieces that expressed and integrated emotional, psychological and even spiritual notions of humanity. Rodin sometimes mixed, recycled,, and re-combined used “spare parts”: plaster-cast heads, torsos, arms, and legs. His mix-and-match sensibility was the inevitable result of his deep belief that art is always in transition, never complete. And these hybrid assemblages were put together in ways that are intended to evoke passion and reaction. This PEM show is a visual treat.

April is National Poetry Month. Berkshire Fine Arts, LLC announces the publication of two books Shards of a Life and Total Gonzo Poems by Berkshire poet and arts critic Charles Giuliano. In July, 1970 he coined the word gonzo while telling an outrageous story. He was the first to publish gonzo in a rock review that summer for the former daily Boston Herald Traveler. With these two books and a third nearing completion Giuliano has morphed gonzo journalism into a vibrant, hip, compelling form of cutting edge poetry.

In a period of radicalism and terrorism, Intersections serves as a beacon for remembering and cherishing the sensitive beauty of the best of Islamic creative culture. This is a must-see visual and environmental experience.

Recently we visited Dartmouth College where we learned that the Hood Museum of Art will close in March for renovations to begin this summer. We discussed these plans with an old friend, John Stomberg, who has just arrived in Hanover as the new director of the museum.

For decades, no centuries, public art in Boston was a bronze statue of mostly historical men sometimes on horses. Unlike most contemporary cities, there were few and mostly small examples of public art sprinkled throughout the city and the region. The long time Mayor Menino regime was frightened of public art. Conservative institutions and universities seemed to ignore what was happening outside the region as well. Public art was something other cities invested in, but not Boston. However, the year 2015 began to demonstrate that there was a new flowering of public art. And about time, too!

In 2013 we interviewed abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly during an exhibition of his relief series in wood at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. A graduate of the Museum School he maintained close times with the city and its museum. He passed away yesterday at his home in Spencertown, New York.

Tom Krens joined the Guggenheim Foundation in 1988 when museums were attempting to transform to business models. Now, for North Adams he is developing Global Contemporary Art Museum. In a new paradigm it is being privately funded as a for profit institution. With reverse momentum he is establishing a business on the model of a fine arts museum.

While in Cienfuegos, we had some interesting musical entertainment. After walking around the square, we climbed several flights of stairs to hear a special concert by the Choir of Cienfuegos, a chorus of about 24 local men and women, who performed a concert of Cuban and international songs and show tunes. One of them, incongruously, was the American folk song, “Shenandoah.”

I spent last week in Cuba with a group of about 30 charming and interesting travelers as part of a Smithsonian Journeys tour. The week was fascinating and intellectually invigorating while also being tiring and enervating.

There are 75 works in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston exhibition Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer curated by Ronni Baer. Of the marquee artists there are two paintings by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and four by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669).

Blessed/ burdened with the fame of her photographer mother, Amy Arbus, after youthful resistance and the pursuit of studying music, was lured into a career in photography. She has had some 25 one woman shows and published five books. The stunning and sensual exhibition of modern master appropriations, Amy Arbus: After Images, is on view at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum through November 15.

This fall, under director Jill Medvedow, for the first time during her administration, the ICA will present a much anticipated historical exhibition surveying the impact of Black Mountain College on the post war American avant-garde. Under her predecessors, Milena Kalinovska and David Ross, there were many such projects. We spoke with Kalinovska about her Boston years as she prepared to depart with a three year contract as director of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery in her native Prague.