Before it’s too late, allow me to call your attention to a nifty little exhibition at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Entitled Nature/Artifice, the exhibition features 13 works from the museum’s collection that artfully speak to the relationship between nature and culture. I say before it’s too late, because the RISD Museum is […]
Yankee
Homes and Gardens on Display
Yesterday I went on a house and garden tour in the next town. There are many historic houses in that town, especially on their main street, which looks more like a stage set for Anne of Green Gables than it does a real town, operating in the 21st century. But it does operate every day, […]
The Business of Art
Art galleries tend to come and go with the economy. When I first started looking at contemporary art in the 1960s, there was only one serious art gallery in Portland, Maine -Frost Gully Gallery, which eventually returned to Freeport from whence it came. By 1987, at the height of the 1980s boom, there were more […]
Get Out There and Shoot
I am truly blessed by the mail that I receive. It all seems to me to come out of the blue. A letter from a member of the National Guard, telling me how much he loves Yankee, how it used to be the perfect size to fit into the pocket of the cargo pants of […]
Photographers have long been captivated by itinerant peoples. Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans photographed migrant laborers and sharecroppers during the Depression. Josef Koudelka became famous when Aperture published The Gypsies in 1975. Sebastiao Salgado is regarded as perhaps today’s most distinguished documentary photographer based on the epic sweep of his photographs of the world’s dispossessed. […]
Around here, we have our choices of ways to celebrate the Fourth of July. In the town next to us, dozens of residents gather to read the Declaration of Independence, including the names of all the signers. This is done at their historic Meetinghouse which looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The […]
Real Art Ways, an alternative arts space founded in Hartford, Connecticut in 1975, is one of New England’s liveliest contemporary arts venues, like Space in Portland, Maine, and AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island, presenting a heady mix of fine and performing arts. This summer, Real Art Ways has commissioned four works of public art for […]
Welcome to the July 2009 edition of “Jud’s New England Journal,” the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, editor-in-chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, New Hampshire. Old-Time New England Humor: Is It Still Funny? Here’s an example from the famous19th-century humorist known as Artemus Ward. You decide … The use of […]
Two Dogs, One Heart
Mayday came home a week ago. Her fever was gone and she was basically ready to return to her life. There had been no ready explanation for her illness and no real explanation for her recovery, other than the antibiotics she received and the “magic” chicken and rice concoction I took to her up at […]
Folk Art Is Fine Art
In this pluralistic 21st century art society, the distinction between fine art and folk art is hardly worth making. An artist is an artist is an artist and art is anything an artist says it is. Art can be an object, an act, an installation, or just idea. It can be made of anything from […]
Summer is Calling
The Inn on the Library Lawn Open year-round 1234 Stevenson Road Westport, NY 888-577-7748, 518-962-8666 theinnonthelibrarylawn.com Basin Harbor Club Open May 13 to October 18 4800 Basin Harbor Road Vergennes, VT 800-622-4000, 802-475-2311 basinharbor.com Zeke Leonard Design Fall River, MA zekeleonard.comGet Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe Zwicker Woodworking Ltd. Open […]
Avi and Celia Music Review
At first glance, these two University of Vermont grads may seem a little young to be a folk roots duo, but then Celia starts smashing out a rhythm on her washboard and it quickly becomes obvious that this is for real. Though only in their early twenties, Avi and Celia have been collaborating for seven […]