Wilhelm Neusser and I first met in a roomful of paintings at an art auction. I asked him if he had a favorite of the works on view, and he began speaking about perceived intentions of many of the artists,…
After hiatus, Big Red & Shiny is pleased to continue Inside/Out, our artist-in-residence series. Inside/Out last ran during 2012 through 2013, and offered a space in which artists could discuss their studio practice and work. In this new iteration, a guest artist in…
Art in Service: a conversation between Leah Triplett Harrington of BR&S, Kate Gilbert of Now + There, and Maggie Cavallo of Alter Projects Last month, the City of Boston launched Boston Creates, its first-ever cultural plan. The ten-year plan aspires…
When Jed Speare died earlier this spring, Boston’s experimental arts community lost a pioneering artist, a tenacious advocate, a dear colleague, and an even more dear friend. Jed was best known for his work as a composer and sound artist,…
In Marguerite Yourcenar’s essay, “That Mighty Sculptor, Time,” she speaks of the “involuntary beauty” of ruined sculpture from the ancient past: …statues so thoroughly shattered that out of the debris a new work of art is born: a naked foot…
I am viewing Providence College–Galleries’ inaugural digital exhibition, Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies, curated by Art F City, and on view in its “IRL” physical form through July 2nd at GRIN, from a window seat of an Amtrak train. The railroad, a…
Being a pack rat and a sucker for attachment to objects, I’ve put a lot of thought into the value of things if you are using memory as a currency. Recently my sister Nicole Duennebier and I were invited to participate in…
The attitude commonly required of museum visitors is that of a flaneur, moving at a relatively sedate stroll or saunter though the many galleries. Megacities Asia at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston has a more rapid heartbeat, so to…
Since 1895, cultural institutions from around the world have gathered at the Venice Biennale to present the latest developments in their country’s visual arts, performance, and design. With the Biennale attracting over 500,000 visitors last year, prospective contributors vie to…
By Ileana Selejan & Thomas Willis On the night of Saturday March 12th at Casablanc Boston, artist Thomas Willis conducted a performance posed as a completely operational nightclub, showcasing work created during his 2015 summer residency at the Cosmopolitan of Las…
The Woven Arc, an exhibition at Harvard University’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, demonstrates the important role that textiles have played in the history of art and continue to play in the contemporary art world. Director…
When we aren’t seeing new work and writing about it, we’re probably reading. Here’s a selection of some articles that we’ve read in the past couple of weeks and found particularly engaging. Some are recent, while others are older and…
A hole can be a portal, a passageway, a point of penetration, an injury, an orifice, a site of leakage. The holes in Linda Leslie Brown’s latest exhibit take the viewer not to Wonderland but a dumping ground. Unwanted items…
“Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.” – Naomi Wolf For an exhibition centered on information, I certainly didn’t feel informed…
Monday at 5 pm public comments on the Boston Creates Cultural Plan will close. (The full text of the plan draft can be read here along with community comments, including my own). We encourage you to read the Cultural Plan…
Many years ago, while living in London, I became fascinated with honey bees after reading The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. In the novel, a terrible disaster leaves only a few groups of people living in the world.…
In this installment of Here to Create, Courtney Moy talks with local curator and artist Silvi Naci. Naci is an active member of the creative community with an avid spirit for supporting the arts, having worked in a variety of…
One beautiful July morning in 2013 Boston woke to discover green paint had been thrown against the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial that sits across from the State House in the Boston Public Garden. Outrage followed but…
Up at the Danforth Museum\School through May 15, Volcanoes, Riots, Wrecks, and Nudes is a brilliant exhibition that showcases paintings and prints spanning Edward Hagedorn’s brief career. The title was taken from a 1944 quote wherein Hagedorn listed his favorite…
In his seminal study on the subject, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, James Young distinguishes monuments from memorials as “material objects, sculptures, and installations used to memorialize a person or thing…a memorial may be a day, a…