Museum of Fine Arts

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.

The blockbuster summer exhibition, through September 13, is testing the limits of the recently renovated and expanded Clark Art Institute to handle maximum visitation even mid week. Only a few of the 50 works in the exhibition Van Gogh and Nature will be readily familiar to visitors. Many of the works on view, gathered from major collections, rarely travel to special exhibitions such as this. The curators have provided an intimate view of his daily practice and meticulous study of nature.

Because of the activity of the 19th century collector William Sturgis Bigelow the Museum of Fine Arts has some 30,000 Japanese prints. He donated 80% of these treasures. Through August 8 the MFA is showing 230 works by the Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The centerpiece is his iconic color woodblock print “Under the Wave off Kanagawa,” “a.k.a. “The Great Wave.” It is from "Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji" which the artist produced while in his 70s. He later added ten more because of the success of the series.

After less than a decade the land locked ICA on the waterfront has run out of space. There is a desperate plan to expand into two floors of a 17 floor adjacent building which is under construction. It has become ever more obvious that the award winning design by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro. is proving to be an utter dysfunctional disaster.

In 2009 Michael Rush, then the director of the Rose Art Museum, took the fall when Brandeis University schemed to close the museum and sell its $350 million collection. In 2010 he became the founding director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. He died recently at 65.

The Venice Biennale is about to open. The renowned curator and museum director, Jane Farver, was working with the artist Joan Jonas on an installation in the American Pavilion. It was announced that she died suddenly apparently of a heart attack. Jane was a friend and beloved mentor during her tenure as director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center from 1999 to 2011.

The legendary Provincetown Players was founded in 1915 and after a couple of seasons transferred to New York. We asked Bragan Thomas, the Co Chair of Programming, what is being planned for the centennial celebrations at Provincetown Theater. We also discussed a world premiere reading of his play "Caligula and the Three Daggers."

Belinda Rathbone, daughter of Perry Rathbone, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1955 to 1972, discusses her book The Boston Raphael: A Mysterious Painting, an Embattled Museum in an Era of Change, and a Daughter’s Search for the Truth at the Clark Art Institute on Sunday, April 26 at 3 pm.

From 1989 to 1993 Matthew Teitelbaum was an ICA curator under director Milena Kalinovska. On August 2, after some 22 years at the Art Gallery of Ontario, he will take over as the 11th director of the Museum of Fine Arts. It is anticipated that he will bring a more welcoming management style than the autocratic Malcolm Rogers who cleaned house and instilled fear in the staff under the mantra of One Museum.

Recently the Clark Art Institute completed a $145 million expansion and renovation following the master plan of Tadao Ando. Now 69 the director Michael Conforti will retire this summer following 20 years in Williamstown. Widely regarded as one of America's finest mid size regional museums on his watch the endowment grew from $128 million to $357 million.

Recently Kenworth Moffett posted a succinct account of his theoretical views and tenure as founding curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine arts. This is part one of a followup interview with Moffett. Here we explore his education at Columbia and Harvard as well as a unique relationship with Clement Greenberg the leading critic of his generation.

Conceptual artist and merry prankster, Jay Critcholey, will have his first museum retrospective at the Provincetown Art Associatrion and Museum from May 1 through June 21. it will present an ove view of three decades of work and residence as a humorous activist in the renowned artists colony. Through his inventive annual events such as Provincetown Harbor Swim for Life Critchley has been instrumental in raising some $4 million for a variety of charities that benefit the community.