Newest Features
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston has announced nine artists as finalists for the 2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize. The honorees for the the museum’s biennial award and exhibition for Boston-area artists are Robert de St. Phalle, Eirik Johnson, Fred Liang, Rebecca Meyers, Matthew Rich, Daniela Rivera, Evelyn Rydz, Amie Siegel and Steve Tourlentes. They were paired down from a list of “over 70” nominees. The artists will select work to show at the ICA in the Foster Prize Exhibition, which opens September 22, 2010, and the winner will be announced…
By BIG RED January 22, 2009 Candid photos from a Big RED night on-the-town at GALLERY for the lecture and opening of Domesticated: Modern Dioramas of Our New Natural History, Photographs by Amy Stein, at the Harvard Museum on Natural History in Cambridge, MA. Amy Stein The Harvard Museum of Natural History “Domesticated: Modern Dioramas of Our New Natural History” is on view through April 18th at The Harvard Museum of Natural History is located at 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, just past Harvard Yard.
By MICAH J. MALONE For the past few columns I have focused on artists who began their careers – and built reputations – with work marked by a ruthless economy of means. Many artists who start with low cost materials and innovative production methods wind up with enterprises that spend exorbitant amounts of money in the developing, producing and maintenance of their artistic practice (Chris Burden was my last subject). My interest in tracing this trajectory is not to evoke a cynical mistrust of expensively produced artwork, but to question how much,…
By STEVE AISHMAN Artists and giving to charitable causes seem to go well together. The biennial ARTcetera art auction is a great example where Boston’s visual arts community has donated artwork and time to support the AIDS Action Committee since 1985. There are, of course, numerous other examples of charity art auctions across the globe for virtually every type of charity event. Most art auctions are supported largely by artist or collector donations and while every art auction is different, the quality of art and artists represented can be world class. The…
By CHELSEY PHILPOT The LINES Ballet’s Friday night performance at the Institute of Contemporary Art began with false informality: the dancers, wearing sweatpants and t-shirts, warmed up on stage as the sold out audience took their seats. Though this display was meant to be casual, it was still a performance. One female dancer stretched in loose pants and a hooded sweatshirt, but her pointe shoes emerged every time she lifted her legs in long arabesques, hinting at what was to come. Choreographer Alonzo King knows how to create a visual tableau. King’s…
By JAMES A. NADEAU The recent shifting in the curatorial make up of Boston has caused me to stop and reflect upon just what these institutions actually mean to us. With curators moving from one museum to another or an academic institution to a museum does this reflect upon what that institution represents? Or does it change the way we think of that particular museum? I ask because as artists and people involved in the local arts community we often feel a sense of ownership. It is our museum and our art.…
By CHRISTIAN HOLLAND One year after opening his gallery at 460 Harrison, the gallerist Anthony Greaney has moved to new, more accessible space on the corner of 450 Harrison – where Bernie Toale formerly plied his trade. The relocation from the abstrusely placed room behind the Howard Yezerski gallery and into a sunlit storefront just a few weeks ago has brought with it a boost in foot traffic for Greaney and might, perhaps, bring some more recognition for one of Boston’s newest galleries. Big RED’s Christian Holland asked Greaney a few questions…
By LEAH TRIPLETT In his Brooklyn Rail essay last spring How to Look at Postmodern Painting and Its Criticism, Irving Sandler described his witness to the death of modernism, and emergence of postmodernism. Sandler writes that art criticism has failed to evolve after its 1970s heyday, and that no longer are there the “riveting polemics…Art world discourse has become unfocused and undramatic, and in the minds of many, irrelevant.” As someone new to the art world, someone younger than Jesus, I agree that it seems now that what art criticism needs is…