Museum of Fine Arts

The Boston Raphael by Belinda Rathbone is the first book to focus on the Museum of Fine Arts since the two volume official centennial history by Walter Muir Whitehill in 1970. She writes about the scandal that brought disgrace to her father's brilliant career. This attempt to rehabilitate his reputation also provides a rich and compelling overview of the era in which he was the paradigm of a successful museum director.

James Turrell is best known for developing Roden Crater in Arizona as an epic scaled celestial observatory and light work. The project is incomplete and not accessible to visitors. But it is the heart and soul of work that is world renowned. In 2013 there was a touring retrospective of his work. The approximate scale of that exhibition, some 32,000 square feet, will be used for a 25-year-long Turrell installation at Mass MoCA.

Jay Milder came of age during the Second Generation of the New York School as one of the seminal Figurative Expressionist painters and one of the SoHo loft pioneers. Today Milder's influence on painting is widespread and he has been cited as influence of both Neo-Expressionism in the United States and the graffiti art movement in Brazil.

Recently we were among the 1.3 million annual visitors to the Getty Center in California. The Richard Meier designed complex opened in 1997 at a cost of some $1.3 billion. While spectacular in scale and cliff top site the museum is oddly generic displaying a thin permanent collection with a handful of very expensive acquisitions through some curatorial hanky panky.

Through October 13 the new special exhition galleries of the Clark Art Instiute feature Make It New: Abstract Painting from the National Gallery of Art 1950-1975. This is part two of a dialogue with Clark curator David Breslin who worked with Harry Cooper of the National Gallery. We discussed how this changes art history and the impact of the exhibition on showing modern art in the Berkshires.

The Barons of England forced King John to sign Magna Carta in 1215. It limited his Divine Rights and created a Constitutional Monarchy laying a foundation of British Common Law and the eventual creation of Parliament. A less than perfect document it was annuled a few months later then revived several times in later years. One of only four copies of the original document is on display as the special exhibiton Radical Words: From Magna Carta to the Constitution on view at the Clark Art Institute through November 1.

Magna Carta comes to the Clark courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral as part of the United Kingdom’s preparations for celebrating the document’s 800th anniversary in 2015. The Lincoln Cathedral Exemplar of Magna Carta is widely regarded as the finest extant copy of the document due to the fact that it is written in an ‘official’ hand and has remained at Lincoln since the time of its first issue.

Judith Bookbinder's 2005 publication Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism is the definitive study of this important but neglected movement. Her study is meticulously researched and documented. This is the catalogue for the exhibition that the Museum of Fine Arts has failed to deliver. Significantly most of the Boston Expressionists were Jews struggling with Biblical constraints against the graven image.

Pipaluk Lake takes a long time to conceive her glass and metal “bundles”; she cuts, hammers, attaches, knits, sews… Putting into practice a know-how acquired during a quadruple training in fields as diverse as textile, glass, metal and wood. Once her complex preparation work finished, she abandons her “bundle” to the alchemy of heat and gravity inside the kiln.

During the final days of her exhibition at the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams, Mass. we spoke with Marjorie Minkin about her painted Lexan reliefs. We discussed the current exhibition and background of her relationship with renowned critic, Clement Greenberg, and curator/ critic, Kenworth Moffett. As well as a 2005/06 project in collaboration with her son Mike Gordon of the rock band Phish and engineer Jamie Robertson.

Decades ago the sculptor Kahlin Gibran and his wife Jean purchased a shell in Boston's ethnically mixed South End. A meticulous craftsman the home evolved as a museum of his work and collection. Together they wrote a definitive 1974 biography "Kahlil Gibran, His Life and World." Now Jean has published "Love Made Visible: Scenes from a Mostly Happy Marriage" about a complex relationship with her late husband.

Outgoing populist and vulgarian, MFA director Malcolm Rogers, has orchestrated yet another celebrity based, crowd pleasing exhibition. The traveling restrospective of paintings by Jamie, a third generation manifestation of the famous Wyeth dynasty, is actually kind of fun. Where the work fits in the canon of the art of our time, however, is another matter.

From 1974 to 1994 the German/ American artist Otto Piene was the director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. With a farm in Groton he continued to commute to his studio in Dusseldorf. He died this week, at 85, while working on a major museum exhibition and sky art event in Berlin. While celebrated internationally, there will be an exhibition of Group ZERO this seaon at the Guggenheim, he was snubbed by the Boston art world and media.

When Dr. Paul Buttenwieser, the newly-appointed President of the BSO's Board, stepped down from the board of the Institute of Contemporary Art, he performed on the piano at a sold-out fundraiser. He had studied piano as a young man in New York. He is a descendant of the Lehman banking family, which of course adds materially to his board credentials. But that he is a competent enough pianist to perform with Yo-Yo Ma in a sold out fundraiser is also an important credential.

Since freeing itself from communism in 1990, Hungary has blossomed into a westernized country. Gyor and Szentendre are charming small towns with a variety of cafes, restaurants, craft and sweet shops. The capital Budapest on the Danube is a beautiful city with great monuments, fashionable avenues, elegant shops, and a vibrant night life.

During our visit to Crystal Springs Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas we met with museum spokesperson Diane Carol. Fending off questions of media controversy regarding aggressive acquisitions she emphasized that the museum is free and serves a region that lacks resources of its quality. As she pointed out since opening in 11/11/11 some 1.3 million visitors have viewed "Kindred Spirits" by Asher B. Durand which formerly hung in the New York Public Library.

After extensive renovation and expansion the Clark Art Institute reopens this summer. Much is being made of how its Tadeo Ando designed low lying horizontal line and large reflecting pool embrace nature and the background rolling mountain range. The paradigm for architecture set into natural surroundings, however, is the Moshe Safdie design for Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas. It is nestled into a ravine with a series of pontoon "bridges." The museum which opened on 11/11/11 has some 500,000 annual visitors for its controversial collection of American art.

From the late 1890s through the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Moscow based business man Sergei Ivanovich Schukin (1854-1936) assembled one of the great collections of early modern art. When the Soviets confiscated the collection he emigrated to Paris. The National Arts Club in New York is currently showing 35 Russian avant-garde works from the collection of family member Marina and Nikolay Shchukin. Through June 14 the exhibition is sponsored by Russian American Foundation as a part of the Annual Russian Heritage Month.

Nashville is rightly known as The Music City. Since 2001, with the opening of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in a former art deco post office the city is also a regional destination for world class art exhibitions. Meeting with museum staff we discussed how a non collecting institution, a kunsthalle, manages to leverage major loans and traveling exhibitions. Primarily this is done by original scholarly work and publications as well as building relationships with partnering museums.

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts has conflated visceral and gut wrenching exhibitions: Goya: The Disasters of War and Steve Mumford’s War Journals, 2003–2013. The tandem of shows updates from the iconic series of prints by Goya to the combat images of Mumford that track from the war zone, to veterans undergoing rehab, and the restricted access to terrorists incarcerated without due process of law in the Army operated prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Richard Estes’ Realism is the most comprehensive exhibition of Estes’ paintings ever organized. A master of contemporary realism, Estes is primarily known as a painter of the urban landscape. This exhibition features 50 paintings ranging from Estes’ first New York City façades in the late 1960s to panoramic views of Mount Desert Island in the 2000s.

Overcoming both administrative roadblocks and censorship, Cuban artist Lázaro Saavedra performs Funerary Egocentrism at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), on Wednesday, April 30.

An exhibition by the still life painter Elizabeth Johansson is always a notable occasion. The Clark Gallery, in Lincoln, Mass is presenting a selection of exquisite, meticulously observed and rendered drawings and paintings. The works will be on view through March 29.

After three years with eleven museums on three continents the treasures of the Clark Art Institute are back home safe and sound. They will be seen this summer when the museum reopens after extensive renovation and expansion on July 4. This grand tour of major museums will reap benefits as the Clark requests loans for major exhibitions. Other major museums, however, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the Guggenheim, have loaned works to their satellites and commercial exhibition promoters for cold cash.

This week representatives of the Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Mass MoCA met with the media to promote plans for a spectacular Northern Berkshires season. The Clark reopens following extensive expansion and renovation. Mass MoCA offers the first full season of its Anselm Kiefer building. Jenny Gersten has planned a blockbuster program for WTF. WCMA plans special events like a Think and Drink series. In high season it may be hard to book a hotel or dine at the best restaurants.