One of the great things about art making is that there are no rules. Just as “art” is anything an artist decides it is, a “drawing” can be almost anything, from traditional mediums such as charcoal, graphite, or pen and ink on paper to pastels, watercolors, and oil stick. In general, any art created in […]
Edgar Allen Beem
Yankee
The Free Spirit of Vermont
If there is a straight line in the state of Vermont I have never seen it. Vermont is, by seasonal turns, a green or white landscape of hills and mountains, hollows, valleys, and gorges, all bucking and turning and curvilinear in the extreme. Vermont is also, perhaps because it is located upriver from New York, […]
Yankee
Art of Ancient Iraq
The art and culture of the ancient Middle East is not one of my strong points, so I am not going to pretend to say anything particularly profound about Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum, which opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on September 21 and runs through January […]
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Chihuly at RISD
On September 27, Rhode Island School of Design celebrates the grand opening of its new $34 million Chace Center with a day of performances, music, and special exhibitions. The Chace Center, named in honor of Happy and Malcolm Chace by RISD trustee Jane Chace Carroll and her siblings, Malcom G. Chace and Eliot Chace, is […]
Yankee
Photographs by the Book
Just in time for back-to-school, the Portland Museum of Art is hosting “Andr
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Like Breath on Glass
When I was doing graduate work at Simmons College back in the early 1970s, I often spent my lunch break next door at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, that elegant little palazzo frozen in time on Boston’s Fens. The art, the architecture, and the atmosphere, especially the indoor garden, were like a vacation abroad, if […]
Yankee
Tank Farm as Work of Art
Jean Maginnis, founder and executive director of the non-profit Maine Center for Creativity, was out bicycling in South Portland, Maine, a few years ago when it occurred to her that the large oil storage tanks along the South Portland waterfront would make great canvases for an artist. In 2005, she first floated the idea that […]
If you happen to be anywhere near Lake Champlain between now and October 26, and you like your art light, upbeat and life-affirming, you should definitely plan to visit the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, seven miles south of Burlington on Route 7. The top two attractions of the Shelburne’s 10 summer shows are “Mary […]
Maine
Apocalypse Maine
Biennial art exhibitions, whether by invitation only or juried shows open to all, have become waypoints on the contemporary art landscape, providing artists and audiences alike a chance every couple of years to see what’s new, what’s happening, who’s hot, who’s arrived. As big, brawling, messy, and imperfect as they are, biennials are welcome events, […]
Bombay-born, London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor is frequently called a magician or an illusionist because of the way his art plays with perception, capturing reflected environments in highly polished surfaces, distorting them like funhouse mirrors, inferring unseen volumes and negative spaces with works built into floor and walls, performing sleight-of-form acts with huge objects that function […]
Yankee
Maine in the Abstract
Last week I was contacted by the Abbeville Press’s Abbeville Manual of Style to do an on-line interview about contemporary art in Maine and New England. In answer to the question “Do you have a favorite artist or favorite work of art?”, I wrote that “As a Maine native and chauvinist, I am most drawn […]
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in the Cheever-esque village of Ridgefield, CT, is one of the rare non-collecting art institutions in New England. Like the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Real Art Ways in Hartford, and Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, the Aldrich Museum exists to support new art, a place where […]