Museum of Modern Art

The Joffrey Ballet, one of America’s pioneering ballet companies of the 20th century, makes a rare East Coast appearance to conclude the Jacob’s Pillow 80th Anniversary Season August 22–26. The Joffrey Ballet returns for the first time since its high-profile appearances at the Pillow in the 1950s and 60s, presenting an impressive program that features Taiwanese-American choreographer Edwaard Liang’s Age of Innocence, Russian choreographer Yuri Possokhov’s Bells, and the world premiere of Son of Chamber Symphony by Stanton Welch, Artistic Director of Houston Ballet.

Architecture as sculpture was a 20th Century concept embraced by many modernist architects. This year there were several major examples of noteworthy sculptural architectural statements. This is architecture as form. Unlike many other less imaginative Olympic games, the London Olympics showcased several wonderful structures. Perhaps the worst one was by sculptor Anish Kapoor who created a bad piece of architecture as a piece of grandiose functional sculpture. Other fine examples are a wonderful temporary piece at PS 1, a new design museum in Shenzen, China and one at London's Serpentine Gallery.

Conceptualized in 1945 and completed in 1949, architect Philip Johnson's Glass House almost immediately became a 20th Century architecture icon. Used by Johnson as a weekend retreat for 58 years, it is now shared with the public as part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is a pilgrimage mecca for architecture buffs to see the eccentric outer structures and contemporary art collection of Johnson and his longtime partner art curator/critic David Whitney. This is a visually-compelling experience of an architectural masterpiece.

I explain to my clients that they are not auditioning for a record company; the record company is auditioning for us. We know you’re great and we are looking for the A&R man who gets it.

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival kicks off June 16 with the 80th Anniversary Gala, followed by “a veritable dance explosion” (Claudia La Rocco of The New York Times) of more than 300 free and ticketed performances, talks, exhibits, classes, and events spanning three months.

A version of the traveling exhibition The Italians by the late photographer, Leonard Freed, will be presented in August at the Eclipse Mill Gallery by the gallerist/ entrepreneur Ralph Brill. We met with Brill to discuss Freed and other wide ranging thoughts and projects. There was a focus on North Adams as the former home of Arnold Printworks and Sprague Electric prior to becoming home to Mass MoCA.

The 7th Annual season of The Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) will celebrate this year with the latest in independent feature, documentary, short and family films. The festival runs from May 31 – June 3, 2012 in Great Barrington and June 1 – June 3rd in Pittsfield, MA and will be showcasing over 70 films in independent filmmaking.

ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage announces a second round of curated programming for the Paramount LED Windows on the façade of 559 Washington Street. The old Arcade Building LED Wall, first programmed last fall, now features a new show of work by three contemporary artists.

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute presents a new installation by artist Mark Dion, Phantoms of the Clark Expedition, reflecting on the history of exploration and on an expedition to North China that the Institute’s founder Sterling Clark undertook in 1908. On view May 9 to August 3, 2012, the installation consists of a series of dioramas and sculptures representing objects and specimens that would have been used or collected during expeditions that occurred in that era. The installation is being presented at The Explorers Club at 46 East 70thStreet in New York.

None of the collections of Gertrude, Leo, Michael Stein and his wife Sarah remained intact. They sold and traded many masterpieces during their lifetimes. The collections were further dispersed by their heirs. In a definitive exhibition The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde 200 of these works have been brought together and are now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The 80th Anniversary Season includes an impressive blend of world premieres, U.S. premieres, live music, company debuts, legendary dance companies, emerging choreographers, and more than 300 ticketed and free events, talks, performances, classes, exhibits, and tours hosted at the Pillow’s 163-acre National Historic Landmark site.

Why do we "like" even "love" certain objects? And others we do not? Is it somehow in our DNA? How did Apple (Steven Jobs) connect so well with our wants despite what our needs are? Our objects of desire strike emotional chords. It isn't just about aesthetics, but certainly that is a major aspect of what the resonance of desire and ownership are. Designers wrestle constantly with an element's functional form. Getting it just right has less to do with science than art. This is true of a structure, object or fashion statement.

The Cindy Sherman restrospective at MoMA is a must see knockout. It demonstrates why she is among the most successful and widely appreciated artists of her generation. While following the simple premise of photographing herself in a range of setting and personas there has been a remarkable ongoing evolution theough the work.

The 7th Annual season of The Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) will celebrate this year with the latest in independent feature, documentary, short and family films. The festival runs from May 31 – June 3, 2012 in Great Barrington and June 1 – June 3rd in Pittsfield, MA and will be showcasing over 70 films in independent filmmaking.

ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage closes its second season of adventurous, independent and repertory films with the final entry in Gotta Dance, an ambitious five-month survey of the American film musical; late-period Renoir and the second annual Festival Focus showcase. Films are screened at Emerson College’s Paramount Center (559 Washington St., Boston), in the Bright Family Screening Room.

This June, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston presents the first museum survey of Josiah McElheny. McElheny uses the ancient and labor intensive medium of glass to create objects of exceptional beauty and formal sophistication. An artist of diverse interests, McElheny draws on art history, politics, and cosmology (a branch of astronomy that deals with the structure of the universe) to encode his glassworks with information, turning these exquisite objects into repositories of meaning. A mid-career survey of the artist’s work, Josiah McElheny: Some Pictures of Infinity

The sculptor John Chamberlain passed away recently. On February 24 the Guggenheim Museum opens a retrospective of his work John Chamberlain: Choices. It will remain on view through May 13. The New York museum has posted its schedule through May, 2013.

Williams College today announced the appointment of Christina Olsen as the Class of 1956 Director of the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). Olsen is currently the director of education and public programs at the Portland Art Museum and previously worked at the Getty Foundation and Getty Museum.

Eva Zeisel, one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th Century who created beautifully lyrical yet practical tableware and ceramics, has died at the amazing age of 105. Zeisel estimated that she had designed 100,000 pieces of tableware. Many of her elegant curving organic pieces often appeared to have human qualities, particularly in the way they tended to hug and nestle. These playful, simple designs first produced in the 1940s are still popular.

The Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design announced a significant donation from Bank of America. Pleiades (1982), an important wall-relief sculpture by American artist Lynda Benglis, was recently added to the Museum's collection.

At the beginning of WWII, the United States War Department was in a dilemma. They needed a more modular, lightweight way of splinting wounded personnel. They turned to the creative Venice Beach based designers, Charles and Ray Eames, to help solve the problem. The Eameses had been working on molding plywood for the previous few years. Having accessible the Navy's facilities, their design team was able to develop a molded plywood splint. Sculptural and elegant, it is now a design icon.

The vast survey of some 200 works by Willem de Kooning at the Museum of Modern Art through January 9 potently recalls the era of my formative years when painting was the paradigm and art still mattered. For all of us who studied art in the 1950s and 1960s de Kooning was a God. Recently I worshiped in a temple of his works. But in order to create such horrific, visionary paintings more than likely the artist made a pact that damns him to an after life in purgatory if not hell.

David A. Ross started a career in museums at 20 while still an undergraduate. He became curator of video art for the Everson Museum of Syracuse. His career as a museum director ended abruptly, at 53, in 2001 when he was fired just short of four years at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Currently he lives in Beacn, New York and commutes as chair of the MFA in Art Practice program at New York's School of Visual Arts.

Ninety-four percent of Clyfford Still's output is now housed in a new museum in Denver. The hush hanging over his work has been broken and all the early excitement and praise he received from his peers and critics is proven correct in the paintings exhibited in this extraordinary viewing space.

In 2001 David A. Ross, after a four year "honeymoon" was fired as the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Prior to that he served as director of Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Since departing as a museum director Ross has been a chameleon after decades in the art world with more than nine lives. Today he performs as lead singer with the band Red. His day gig is running a graduate program for the School of Visual Arts in New York.