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Over the last few years I’ve developed sympathy for those who organize large, all-encompassing exhibits like biennials. If you hold on too tightly to a curatorial vision, you can create an autobiographical list of your favorite artists or styles. If you are too loose with a curatorial vision, you may accidentally create a Rorschach test allowing the public to complain about almost anything; including what others might deem a success. The deCordova Biennial, now in its third iteration, is a paradox. It’s the type of show that you don’t remember the show,…
On Sunday, the Boston Art Dealers Association (BADA) gathered a panel of Boston-area collectors to speak to their passion for discovering artists and owning art. Its moderator Nick Capasso, Director of the Fitchburg Art Museum, brought his own perspective to the discussion: his questions drew comparisons between the responsibilities and approaches of museums as collecting institutions, and those of individuals as they accumulate artworks. These queries touched on how collections are planned, reliance on expertise in the field, how collectors find the art they love, and how long that love lasts. The…
Boston City Hall is the building Bostonians love to hate the most. As one of architecture’s “ugly” ducklings, Boston City Hall symbolizes the city’s coming of age in the late 1960s. It began in 1961 with a nationwide, juried competition that not only launched the careers of the city’s young architects—Gerhard Kallmann, N. Michael McKinnell and Edward Knowles—but also brought provincial Boston into the twentieth century. The winning design announced to the world the aspirations of a city strongly attached to its puritanical heritage and its desire to become a modern metropolis.…
Every week, BR&S picks out a series of gallery events, screenings, exhibitions, performances. Here are our choices for you to go & see this week: • • • Events • • • Wednesday October 23 TV Buddha, Nam June Paik Boston Cyberarts Gallery, 141 Green St., Jamaica Plain, MA ATNE Salon Series Presents: Video in Art Installation Panel: George Fifield, Denise Marika, Erik Sanner 7:30pm / Free, but space is limited. Register here. • • • • • • • • • • Thursday October 24* MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75…
In my last post, I discussed Boston’s push to brand itself as an innovation hub and raised questions about the role of art within this context. As I continue the series, I am engaging diverse members of the city’s art landscape in conversations on these questions, and exploring the issue from a variety of perspectives. Given Boston’s exceptional concentration of universities and museums, which are often considered the foundation of the city’s art scene, I wanted to speak to curators who work within these institutions. While museums and university galleries have often…
Welcome to the newest episode of Studio Sessions with guest Devon Clapp. Devon earned a BFA in Printmaking from the Montserrat College of Art in 2006, and an MFA in Painting from the Pratt Institute in New York in 2011. Using quick, expressive marks and bright, outlandish colors, Devon paints scenes that raise a range of conflicting emotional responses, ranging from intrigue, to humor, to uneasy sensations of fear. In his earlier pieces these scenes were often set in the woods and contained many occult references. In recent works the source and…
Fellow commuters, when was the last time you were excited about using your Charlie Card? Probably not when you are scrambling for the last seat on the Red Line, or while cramming yourself onto an overcrowded bus. Most likely not when you missed the last train, or when you survived another rush hour at North Station. Commuting can be mundane and tiring, and your Charlie Card can come to symbolize those feelings. But Culture Tap, a public art installation outside the Boston Center for the Arts, offers Charlie Card holders an opportunity…
Last weekend, hundreds of artists from more than 40 countries convened in Boston for the biennial TransCultural Exchange Conference. Held at Boston University, this year’s TCE, Conference on International Opportunities in the Arts: Engaging Minds, boasted 50 panels with artists, curators, writers and educators, each designed to promote dialogue between artists based in Boston and around the globe, and to develop practical skills necessary to push the boundaries of artistic practice. These panels, according the conference’s program, were “organized to encourage artists to conjure up new worlds and avenues of pursuit—to reach…