Opinion
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Herman Melville and the Berkshires
60,000,000 Copies of Moby-Dick Have Been Published
By: - Sep 29th, 2022By the 1930s, Herman Melville's novel became an example of Great American Writing and was studied in many University English Programs. The interest in Herman Melville continues such that since his death on this day (September 29) in 1891, more than 60,000,000 copies of MOBY-DICK have been published around the world!
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Theatre in Conneticut
Moving Forward from Shutdowns
By: - Sep 18th, 2022The fall theater scene in Connecticut is starting. It will include everything from hard-hitting comedy/drama such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Tony-winning musicals – 42nd Street, Fun Home and Sunset Blvd and everything in between. In fact, two shows – the Great Gatsby and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? are getting two productions each.
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'62 Center at Williams College
The 2022-2023 Season
By: - Sep 12th, 2022The ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance unveiled its live, in-person performances celebrating diverse and challenging theatre, music, and dance programming for the Williams College community and beyond.
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Arnold Printworks of North Adams
Dolls Faithfully Reproduced by Ralph Brill Gallery
By: - Sep 03rd, 2022Celia Smith and her sister-in-law Charity Smith had been sending letters to the Arnold Print Works requesting a meeting for their New Idea – Printed Cloth Dolls. They never received a reply, so with a Sample Doll in hand, they made the trip to North Adams in 1890, but were turned away at the door. Initially the dolls were hand made with cloth scraps. They caught on and sold well. Arnold Print Works agreed to Buy the Partners’ Patented Designs. Royalties were10 Cents per Printed Fabric Yard. In the 1892 Holiday Season, 200,000 Doll Sheets were Sold.
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Manfred Honeck Conducts at Elbphilharmonie
Pittsburgh Symphony Shimmers
By: - Aug 26th, 2022Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony have developed a specialty: revealing the texture of sound. In a concert at Elbphilharmonie, an event in the orchestra’s 75th year of touring, they displayed daring and diverse sounds not often heard. The Maestro and the musicians find buried clues to the balanced mix of rhythms, dynamics in detailed performance directions.
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Slavery Remembrance Day in the US
Dealing with Past Atrocities
By: - Aug 22nd, 2022On July 27, 2022, a bill creating a Slavery Remembrance Day, introduceed by Congressman Al Green of Houston, Texas, passed in Congress. August 20th was the date in 1619 White Lion ship with 20 “and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony Point Comfort in Virginia.
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MASS MoCA Union
Work Stoppage August 19
By: - Aug 15th, 2022Unionized employees of MASS MoCA voted by a 96% vote to engage in a one-day work stoppage on August 19, 2022. Employees will be picketing the Museum all day and asking visitors to express support for a fair contract for staff.
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Every Breath You Take
I Can See for Miles
By: - Jul 22nd, 2022Wudang is the center of Daoism in the world, where the early monks went to hide from the Emperor’s soldiers. The Chinese emperors were fearful that the people would follow the Daoist priests and monks instead of them, and they killed many of them, destroying thousands of temples over the centuries.
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Peter Gelb Unfiltered
Jeff Brown of VAN Magazine Interviews the Met Opera's GM
By: - Jul 04th, 2022What a last seven years it’s been for Peter Gelb and the Metropolitan Opera: Conflicts among board members and between labor and management; allegations of sexual abuse against late music director James Levine; COVID furloughs that left orchestra members in serious financial trouble; the firing of Anna Netrebko over her refusal to denounce Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Jeffrey Arlo Brown sat down with Gelb to talk about those issues, plus Gelb's aesthetic priorities for the Met and whether he has a secret Twitter account.
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San Antonio’s Young Women’s Leadership Academy
Tried to Deny Afro-Indigneous Senior, Kayla Price Graduation Ceremony
By: - Jun 07th, 2022On Friday June 3rd, the Dean of Schools and Principal at San Antonio’s Young Women’s Leadership Academy tried to deny Afro-Indigneous senior, Kayla Price, from walking in her ceremony because of the eagle feather beaded onto her graduation cap. The Young Women’s Leadership Academy (YWLA), part of the San Antonio Independent School District, ranks in the top 20 high schools in the United States. Per their Non-discrimination Statement,
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The Dishwasher Dialogues
Down and Out in Paris in the 1970s
By: - May 11th, 2022The Dishwasher Dialogues is a tale of being down and out in Paris in the 1970s. George James Light and Rafael Sinclair Mahdavi share tales of staying alive working at Chez Haynes a soul food restaurant. It reads like a hipster's Beggars Opera. Literally this is a saga from rags to almost riches.
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Figuration Reconsidered
Sidelined by the Mainstream Art World
By: - May 05th, 2022The artists Martin Mugar and the late Addison Parks often engaged in lively discourses about issues in contemporary art. This is reposted from Mugar's blog Painting from July 16, 2012. Arguably the content is still relevant; particularly in Boston where aspects of figuration have morphed from the Boston Expressionists of the 1930s through the present. The Museum of Fine Arts is currently presenting the controversial Ku Klux Klan paintings of Philip Guston who taught at the Boston University School of Fine Arts. Guston found a haven in Boston while on the lam and shunned as reactionary by the NY art world.
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BSO's Andris Nelsons to Munich Philharmonic
New Orchestra Replaces BSO
By: - Apr 29th, 2022The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra will take over two more concerts at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg on May 20 and 21. The orchestra is filling in for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which had to cancel its entire European tour for this spring due to a major corona outbreak among the musicians*. The Munich Philharmonic is looking forward to these two concerts with Andris Nelson.
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DigBoston Suspends Print Edition
Plans to Publish On LIne
By: - Apr 22nd, 2022Desperate times call for desperate measures. We have to shut down the print edition of this publication for the second time since March 2020 effective immediately. For those of you that follow the American news industry—its local print markets in particular—this should come as no surprise.
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Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater
Biography by Alexis Greene
By: - Apr 13th, 2022Alexis Greene is the author and editor of numerous books about theater, including The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway, written with Julie Taymor, and the biography Lucille Lortel: The Queen of Off Broadway. In addition to writing and editing books about women and theater, Greene’s career spans acting, theater criticism and teaching. She holds a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
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Museum of Fine Arts Boston: 1870 to 2020, An Oral History
Review by Martin Mugar
By: - Apr 09th, 2022Through his blog Painting, the artist Martin Mugar posts think pieces about theories of fine arts. He applies in depth critical analysis to a probing review of the Charles Giuliano book Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1870 to 2020: An Oral HIstory.
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March 16 An Anniversary of Sorts
Long and Winding Road
By: - Mar 16th, 2022At seven AM, March 16, 20221 my friend Michael drove me to Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield. Along the way he told truly terrible jokes to distract me from major surgery for severe spinal stenosis. It entailed five vertebrae. Thankfully, the next three days were a blur and I was out of my gourd on oxy. In rehab/ slammer there was a homeless woman camped in my room with her daughter. They ordered pizza but wouldn't share. That now seems so long ago and far away.
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More About Ukrainian Writer and Artist Julia Kissina
Digging Deeper
By: - Mar 02nd, 2022When Bill Wadsworth sent images and asked what I thought the response was to post Ukrainian Writer and Artist Julia Kissina. Calling attention to this artist in exile could not have been more timely and relevant. It evoked significant reader responses and raised basic questions. This second posting addresses that interest. Many have asked where they may view the work and there was a query from a curator regarding a possible exhibition.
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Dewey Hall's Sourdough Bread Baking Competition
Tasty Event in the Berkshires
By: - Feb 09th, 2022Dewey Hall is to hold a sourdough bread baking competition on Friday, March 4th. Attendees will be invited to sample the contestants' breads, wine from DéPart, beer from Big Elm Brewery, and cheese from Rubiner’s Cheesemongers, and have the opportunity to win loaves of freshly baked sourdough bread via a raffle.
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World Premiere Opera in Washington
Four A List Composer/librettist Teams Contribute
By: - Feb 07th, 2022Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum offered a preview of a world premiere opera developed by Washington National Opera. Written in Stone will be staged at the Kennedy Center from March 5 to March 25. It will be a must-see production.
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Authority and Freedom by Jed Perl
Ancient Dichotomy in Art
By: - Feb 05th, 2022At the end of his life did the wrong politics give Auden the possibility of cancelling Yeats’s greatness as a poet. It suggests that behind the concern for art being politically correct is the illness that Nietzsche said awaited our culture as a whole: the waste land grows: Resentment or “Ressentiment” as he used it is the deeply sour well out from which we channel art into predetermined realms of activity. Perl's new book is its diagnosis.
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BSO Appoints Executives
Maureen Flores, as Chief Development Officer, Asadour Santourian, as Vice President
By: - Jan 07th, 2022Gail Samuel, Eunice and Julian Cohen President and CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, today announced the appointment of two new executive leaders Maureen Flores, as Chief Development Officer, and Asadour Santourian, as Vice President, Tanglewood Music Center & Learning. Both appointments are effective January 2022.
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My Father's Portraits
Aesthetic and Psychic Legacy of Raeford LIles
By: - Jan 05th, 2022During three years in New York in the 1960s I (Charles Giuliano) was assistant director of East Hampton Gallery. Raeford Liles was one of the artists we represented. A native of Birmingham, Alabama he came from a military family. During WW11 he was a fighter pilot in the South Pacific and later served with SAC based in Paris where he studied art and cooking. There PTSD caused a breakdown leading to a lifetime of treatment and medication. He often spoke of his daughters with whom he had a complex relationship. This is explored in a remarkable essay by Barbara Liles. A chapter of a larger work in progress it was published by Southern Humanities Review.
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39th Re-Rooters Day Ceremony
What to Do With Post Holiday Trees
By: - Jan 01st, 2022You are invited to attend the 39th Re-Rooters Day Ceremony, Friday, January 7, 2022, 4:00 pm, Harbor Hotel beach, Provincetown Harbor (snow, storm or shine); bring something non-toxic to burn on a tree boat. Sponsored by the IRS, International Re-Rooters Society, Jay Critchley, President
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What’s on Netflix and Amazon.
Good, Bad and Ugly
By: - Dec 28th, 2021In the dead of winter baby it's cold outside. It's time to curl up on the couch and hunker down with Netflix and Amazon. Here is a cheat sheet of what we've been watching.
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