The Museum of Fine Arts Boston is something of a misnomer as New England’s premier all-purpose art museum does not show only fine arts. Currently, for example, several of the most interesting MFA exhibitions feature works of craft, applied art, commercial art and portrait photography. The exhibition that caught my attention is New Blue and […]
Edgar Allen Beem
Magazine
Mural, Mural on the Wall
In Rhode Island, Gov. Lincoln Chafee, that rarest of all political animals, a liberal Republican turned Independent, has been raising a little private money to beautify the state’s highways with murals by prominent local artists. Last May, a scene of the America’s Cup yacht race designed by North Providence native Anthony Russo was painted on […]
My youngest daughter is currently taking a printmaking class at Bowdoin College, in the course of which she attended Printmaking ABC: In Memorium David P. Becker, an exhibition of prints selected from among the 1,500 prints David Becker bequeathed to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in 2010 when he died at the age of […]
Magazine
Denatured Animals at Brown
The Simen Johan exhibition, “Until the Kingdom Comes,” at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University in Providence escaped my notice until now. The exhibition of Johan’s large-format color photographs of strangely disturbing animals has been up since November and will come down February 17. Simen Johan was born in Norway and came […]
Magazine
Maine Labor History Mural Restored
On Monday, January 14, the Maine State Museum and Maine Department of Labor held a surprise news conference at 8:30 a.m. to announce that the now famous Maine Labor History Mural that Gov. Paul LePage ordered removed from the labor department waiting room in March of 2011 would hang in the atrium of the state […]
Magazine
Lois Dodd, Maine Woman Pioneer
Lois Dodd, one of America’s finest painters, is having her first museum career retrospective at 85. A case could be made that she has been the victim of discrimination in the sexist art world, but Dodd would never make that argument. She has been content to go her own way for the better part of […]
Magazine
An Old Friend for the Holidays
Before there was a young, hip Portland art scene, there was an older, darker Portland scene. Mr. Rossolowsky belongs to that dim past. I think of Mr. Rossolowsky often and of the debt I owe him. I started thinking of him most recently in the wake of the horrible events in Newtown, Connecticut. I thought of him because Mr. Rossolowsky […]
Magazine
Joel Babb Beyond Nature and Culture
In the best of all possible world’s, every artist of significance would have their work collected and discussed in a monograph including 1) high quality color reproductions, 2) analysis of the evolution of the work by an insightful writer and 3) comments by the artist on his/her own work. In fact, very few contemporary […]
When I think of the 1980s, I think of an era of excess, indulgence and phoniness. When I think of the art of the 1980s, I think of three artists – Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jeff Koons. From what I understand, Schnabel, the protean prince of art excess, has been purged from the […]
The Museum of Art Rhode Island School in Providence is currently (through January 13, 2013) featuring a tremendous survey of American landscape photography entitled America in View: Landscape Photography1865 to Now. The exhibition, which sweeps across close to 150 years of history in 150 photographs, was inspired by the gift of 71 photographs from the collection […]
Maine
Alan Bray’s Maine Magic
As we were driving up the coast and then inland to Bangor last week to see some art shows, Portland gallerist Andy Verzosa, who is co-editing a new book on contemporary art in Maine with me, asked me who I would select if I had to name one living artist to represent contemporary Maine […]
The first Maine biennial exhibition I ever attended was held at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in 1979. Since then there has been some sort of a juried biennial ever few years at venues ranging from the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland to the Portland Museum of Art and the Center for Maine […]