Opinion
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Norman Rockwell for Mass Attorney General
Send a Message to Maura Healey
By: - Aug 30th, 2018Initially, Attorney General Maura Healey opposed the fire sale of Berkshire Museum treasures proposed by now long gone and hardly missed director Van Shields. Those who protested gutting the collection were shocked and dismayed that Healey folded. Commentator Steve Nelson suggests that you send the AG a message. He suggests Norman Rockwell as a write in candidate during the primary on Tuesday, September 4. Nelson is an Op Ed contributor to the Berkhire Eagle.
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Paul Manafort Dressed for Success
A Million Bucks for Schmatas
By: - Aug 07th, 2018When Paul Manafort offered to work pro bono for the Trump campaign he was deep in debt. He owed a million for clothing including $25,000 suits and notorious ostrich and lizard coats for $48,000. That's nothing new to Beltway politics. During the Truman/ Eisenhower era lobbyists gifted mink coats, oriental rugs and refrigerators to government insiders. A $28,000 vicuna coat, a gift from Bernard Goldfine, was a scandal that ended the career of Ike's trusted Sherman Adams.
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Was Strindberg a Proto Feminist
Creditors at Shakespeare & Company Provokes Questions
By: - Jul 25th, 2018As magnificently performed by Kristin Wold, her Tesla, in Strindberg's Creditors is a strong, complex, progressive woman. For the first time Shakespeare & Company in Lenox is producing the modernist Swedish playwright. In his own words, however, he stated that "... a woman is a scaled down man, a form whose development was arrested between adolescence and full manhood. ...Woman is inferior to man.”
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Impact of ICA Expansion to East Boston
Continued Neglect of Community of Artists
By: - Jul 11th, 2018The ICA has a major problem not just with East Boston artists, but with most local Boston-area artists, and it's due primarily to 3 factors -- mistaken policies, mistaken attitude, and mistaken curatorial direction. The author is an artist.
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Casting, Equity and Where to Go from Here
Responding to “Boo Yellowface!” Protests During St. Louis Conference
By: - Jul 09th, 2018A couple of weeks ago, theater leaders from across the country authored a statement asking colleagues to reexamine their casting policies in light of recent incidents in which white actors were cast to portray people of color. Since that time, nearly 800 theater artists have signed and there is a working group actively discussing next steps so that we can end this pervasive practice. Because, as managing director of Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Chad Bauman signed the petition, he withdrew from publishing this commentary in American Theatre Magazine. It is reposted from his blog with Bauman's permission.
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How NY Times Is Harming Regional Theatre
Trashing Barrington Stage Production Not an Isolated Incident
By: - Jul 06th, 2018We have posted an opinion piece "End of The Royal Family of Broadway: NY Times Review Spikes Barrington Stage Production." That evoked an e mail from playwrite Mark St. Germain which is posted with his permission. In his view the attack on a developing musical is not an isolated incident. Under its current policies the Times is now inflicting more harm than doing good for regional theatre.
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End of The Royal Family of Broadway
NY Times Review Spikes Barrington Stage Production
By: - Jul 06th, 2018The Barrington Stage world premiere of the musical Royal Family of Broadway has earned mostly positive reviews. It has been treated as a work in progress potentially bound for Broadway. The team assembled for this production have been there before. Because of a devastating review by Jesse Green in the New York Times that may not happen. While Green is an established, and well qualified critic, is it the role of the Times to nip in the bud regional productions being developed for a run in New York?
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Van, Van the Used Up Man
Berkshire Museum Director Shields Retires
By: - Jun 28th, 2018In a tersely worded press release, offering no explanation, the Berkshire Museum announces parting ways with its controversial director, Van Shields. He was hired in 2011 and presided over the decline and potential extincton of the museum. His strategy to sell key works from the permanent collection and launch his New Vision was met with protest and global media attention. Some will praise him for "saving" the museum and endowing its future. For others he leaves behind a pariah shunned by other museums. His departure and potenial board restructuring are essential as the museum mends fences and fine tunes drastic plans for renovations and gimmicky reinstallatons.
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ICA Launches Watershed in East Boston
Expansion Shuttles Across the Harbor
By: - Jun 25th, 2018When the ICA opened its new home on the edge of Boston Harbor its fatal flaw was immediately obvious. While praised for dramatic design with development of surrounding towers it was soon hemmed in with no space for expansion. In a bold move it has now reached across the harbor to fast changing East Boston. A former factory has been reconfigured as Watershed. It combines generous exhibiton space with opportunities for meetings, education, and community programming. A long time community activist Frank Conte covers the launch which opens with free admission on July 4.
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Director Laurie Norton Moffatt of Rockwell Museum
What His Legacy Means to the Berkshires
By: - Jun 12th, 2018The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge has just launched “Keepers of the Flame: Parrish, Wyeth, Rockwell and the Narrative Tradition.” During a recent press preview we enjoyed an unencumbered view of the scholarly and superbly installed exhibition. Founding director, Laurie Norton Moffatt, discussed what the Rockwell legacy means in light of the controversy of the sale of two of his works by the Berkshire Museum. One of those works "Shuffleton's Barber Shop" was acquired by George Lucas who is loaning it to the Norman Rockwell Museum for the next 18 months.
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Recalling Sighting John Updike
The A&P of the Mind
By: - Jun 09th, 2018Summering in Annisquam Martin Mugar, like the Ipswich based author, John Updike, became aware of distinct difference of class and culture. Thre were the easy, self confident debutantes who shopped at the A&P in their bathing suits. And the townies, like Sam, who unnoticed lusted for them. Recently, Mugar was reminded and inspired by watching the author crossing a street ages ago. Here he spins the yarn of old.
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Real Eyes on Adams
Former Furniture Store Now a Gallery
By: - Jun 03rd, 2018Until a few years ago the vast Simmons Furniture Store anchored the Park Street business area of downtown Adams. The town has improved curbside cosmetics. Now that business has been revitalized as Real Eyes Gallery with two large spaces. One featuers an arts and crafts store while the other displays works by former Met Opera scene painter, Bill Riley. He and his wife Francine Anne Riley are now gallerists as well as continuing as arts activists and community catalysts.
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Fed and State Support for Berkshire Arts
Making $1 Worth $10
By: - Jun 01st, 2018Arts leaders and the media met at Shakespeare & Company to hear good news about state and federal funding. With manufacturing long gone from the region cultural tourism is the major industry. The arts season attracts more than 400,000 visitors and generates 4,000 plus jobs. Congressman Richard Neal announced $348,000 in NEA funding for the Berkshires. The federal funding cycle provides $900,700 to the Massachusetts Cultural Council and $1,092,400 to the New England Foundation for the Arts to benefit cultural groups across the state. He reported that the NEA this year got an increase of $3 million for a total of $152,849,000.
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Boston Publisher Stephen Mindich at 74
Presided Over Once Formidable Phoenix Media Empire
By: - May 25th, 2018While he lacked stature, Stephen Mindich, who died this week at 74, cast a giant shadow. As a hip capitalist at the height of his power he was an ersatz Citizen Kane of Boston's counter culture industry of print and broadcasting media. In 2013, his Phoenix empire exhinguished never again to take flight from the embers of fame and fortune.
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Berkshire Museum Plays Bait and Switch
Juried Show Art of the Hills Opens on June 2
By: - May 22nd, 2018On Sunday, June 2, the Berkshire Museum is hosting a festive opening for its summer-long juried exhibition Art of the Hills. Of 230 who applied works by 36 regional artists will be on view. I will not cross picket lines to attend the "celebration." There are no plans for Berkshire Fine Arts to view or review the exhibition.
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Arnie Reisman on Boston's Counter Culture
Golden Age of Arts and Media from 1969 to 1981
By: - May 08th, 2018The critical success of "Astral Weeks" by Ryan Walsh has brought national media attention to Boston's counter culture in 1968. Following a prior interview with former Cambridge Phoenix editor, Harper Barnes, we pick up on the other side of the Charles River with former Boston After Dark Editor, Arnie Reisman. This continues our coverage of arts and media during a golden age from 1969 to the demise of The Real Paper in 1981.
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Rick Harlow's The Landscape of Energy
Statent by a Berkshire Artist
By: - May 05th, 2018Through the end of May The Eclipse Mill Gallery launches its 2018 season with the first Berkshire solo show of abstract paintings by resident artist, Rick Harlow. In an artist's statement Harlow provides a context for what he describes as The Landscape of Energy. On May 26 in the gallery at 243 Union Street, North Adams, the group Aluna will create improvised music inspired by the paintings.
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Flight of the Phoenix
Former Editor Arnie Reisman Rebuts Editor Harper Barnes
By: - Apr 15th, 2018The response of former Boston After Dark editor, Arnie Reisman, to former Cambridge Phoenix editor, Harper Barnes, was too long to post as a comment. Accordingly, we have opted to run it under Reisman's byline. He was my first editor at the Brandeis Univertsity Justice and later hired me for Boston After Dark. There is much yet to be said about alternative media in the 1970s but with this exchange matters get curiouser and curiouser.
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Legendary Alternative Editor Harper Barnes
New Journalism in Boston/ Cambridge in the Early 1970s
By: - Apr 14th, 2018The recently published book Astral Weeks, by Ryan Walsh, has brought national attention to the counter culture of Boston/ Cambridge in 1968. This extensive interview with Harper Barnes, former editor of the Cambridge Phoenix and columnist for The Real Paper, covers developments in the early 1970s. It was a fertile era that launched careers of numerous arts critics and political commentators. After a stint in Boston, eventually, he returned to the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch and the city where he continues to reside.
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Chicago Theatre Critic Nancy Bishop
Sharing a Life in the Arts
By: - Apr 06th, 2018We met Chicago theatre critic Nancy Bishop during a conference of American Theatre Critics. In the past few years she has covered theatre for us. This is an interview posted to the website she edits Third Coast Review.
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Renowned Boston Arts Critic David Bonetti
Found Listening to Classical Music
By: - Apr 05th, 2018A Berkshire Fine Arts contributor, the renowned arts critic, David Bonetti, was found dead in his Brookline, Mass. apartment while listening to classical music. His writing career started with Art New England and the Boston Phoenix. He joined the San Francisco Chronicle and then St. Louis Post Dispatch. After that he retired writing the occasional feature on the fine arts. In his final years he wrote on opera for this site. He was widely regarded as one of the best critics of his generation.
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Meet Me in Milwaukee
Intersections Summit Addresses Social Justice
By: - Mar 27th, 2018From March 23 to 25 Milwaukee Repertorty Theatre hosted a conference Intersections Summit. It was convened to address equity, identity and inclusion through diversity and community outreach. In a letter to ATCA president, Bill Hirschman, managing director, Chad Bauman, who hosted us said in part "All in all, nearly 200 theater professionals from 80+ organizations from 30+ states attended including ATCA, TCG, funders such as the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and journalists from media outlets such as The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune. More than 50 engagement leaders presented sessions and several of which were live streamed via our Facebook page as well as Howlround."
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Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
Ryan H. Walsh’s Landmark Study of the Counter Culture in Boston
By: - Mar 12th, 2018For most of 1968 the then struggling Irish musician and composer, Van Morrison, was on the run from his mobbed up New York manager. Living on Green Street in Cambridge, with local musicians he performed gigs and worked on what became the iconic album Astral Weeks. This is the focus of an enthralling book by Ryan Walsh fleshed out in the context of a meticulously researched account of the vibrant counter culture of that year of living dangerously. Through what evolves as a page turner we learn about Mel Lyman and his Fort Hill Cult, their paper Avatar, founding of WBCN FM as the rock of Boston, the Boston Tea Party, the Bosstown Sound, and Boston After Dark/ Phoenix. Along the way we encounter films, The Boston Strangler and Titicut Follies,as well as LSD gurus Tim Leary and Baba Ram Dass. Long overdue this fiftieth anniversary book sets the record straight.
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Berkshire Museum Will Gut Its Collection
Matter to be Settled with Supreme Judicial Court
By: - Feb 10th, 2018A compromise is a deal that neither side is happy with. Other than a few hard fought concessions the Berkshire Museum will now gut the museum and its collection in pursuit of its vulgarian, populist New Vision. It's tarnished leadership, including director, Van Shields and board president, Elizabeth McGraw, will have a tough job earning back the trust and support of a community which they so adroitly alienated.
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Berkshire Museum Top Arts Story of 2017
Coverage Morphed from Local to National News
By: - Dec 26th, 2017A decision on an appeal by Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, to halt the sale of 40 key works of art at Sothebys on behalf of the Berkshire Museum will be decided by the end of January. Van Shields, now on medical leave as director of the museum, and board president, Elizabeth "Buzz" McGraw, announced their $60 million plans for a New Vision in July. What started as a local story has morphed into national and global coverage. The outcome of this unethical attempt at deaccessioning by a pariah museum may have a game changing impact on the mandate of all American museums' commitment to preserve and conserve collections for future generations.
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