Though I don’t get to the University of Maine Museum of Art, two hours north of me in downtown Bangor, very often, I have never been disappointed when I have. The Alan Bray exhibition I saw there last fall was the best solo show I saw all year and the I-95 Triennial 2013 (through June […]
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DeCordova’s Boston Biennial
Back in 1987, the then-DeCordova and Dana Museum and Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts, mounted New England Now: Contemporary Art from Six States, a truly authoritative regional survey of the sort that New England needs. The DeCordova became the New England regional hub for new art under curator Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, but, now renamed DeCordova […]
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Jud’s Journal: Vermont
Jud Hale joins us in his next installment of the New England states. This time we discuss Vermont’s common sense. Transcription: Well, we’ve been doing the States during this 75th anniversary of Yankee Publishing, the New England States. So, it brings us to Vermont. There’s a lot you could say about Vermont, but I think […]
A few years ago, I wrote a short profile of photographer David Brooks Stess for the pages of the July/August 2009 Yankee. Many of the black and white photographs featured in that article are now part of the Blueberry Rakers: Photography by David Brooks Stess exhibition at Portland Museum of Art (through May 19). Though […]
Yankee classic from February 1982 Boston in the summer of 1918 was hot and very dry, with only 8.13 inches of rain in four months, according to the U.S. Weather Bureau. For the men in “Receiving Ship,” a naval barracks on Commonwealth Pier where as many as 7,000 enlistees boarded while awaiting assignment or returning […]
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 […]
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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 […]
The rise of the fields’ soft curves, the seasons of the hay, the broad reach of the old apple trees, the long-blooming rosebush on the split-rail fence, the in-your-face view of Mount Monadnock, the brilliance of the night sky … These are just some of the aspects of the beauty that brought me here. It […]
Bill Rodgers knows marathons. In the 1970s and early 1980s, no other runner dominated the sport as he did. He won both the Boston and New York City races four times and became the first American marathoner to break the 2:10 mark. These days, Rodgers, 65, is still running (it’s half-marathons these days)and still spreading […]
A unique project in the small Vermont town of Cabot reveals what its people, young and old, treasure most.
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SLIDE SHOW: Xiomáro’s Weir Farm
“Weir Was Here—Secret Rooms, Doors and Windows” is the first artistic photographic collection documenting the interiors of the key historical structures at Weir Farm National Historic Site, located in Wilton and Ridgefield, Connecticut, which have never been seen by the general public. The homestead was continuously occupied by artists starting with Julian Alden Weir, one […]
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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 […]