art
Art for art's sake - and $1 billion
By adamg - 1/20/12 - 10:45 amBoston Daily totals up all the money spent on art-museum expansion in the Boston area over a decade, and comes up with a pretty large number.
First look at the Gardner's new wing
By adamg - 1/14/12 - 12:19 pm
Greg Cook takes us on a tour of the new Renzo Piano wing of the Fenway museum:
The addition's new 300-seat concert hall and a special exhibition gallery are dashing. And they make the old building better too by freeing up space to showcase the core collection, particularly in the dramatically improved tapestry room.
It's not perfect. From the outside, the addition, which sits behind the palace, could be mistaken for the mechanical building of one of the neighboring, generic school or medical campuses. And the corridor from the new building to the old begins muddled and dull. But the way it delivers you into the old palace, right beside the blossoming courtyard, is a revelation, that feels like Gardner's old magic.
Avast! East Boston's oceanic art gallery
By adamg - 10/24/11 - 7:02 amAnulfo introduces us to East Boston's Shipyard Gallery:
I love that it is less than 10 minute walk from Maverick Station on the Blue Line. I also love that behind each one of the thirty works (mostly sculpture) on display is a pressing environmental issue facing our oceans. I also love that I get to learn about the sponsoring organization behind each piece and of the work they’re doing to protect our oceans.
Art or vandalism?
By adamg - 10/3/11 - 5:40 amThe Daily Free Press interviews a street artist who sometimes wheat-pastes posters, sometimes does some stenciling and sometimes just sprays her tags on things:
After she finishes, Skeczh said she runs from the site to avoid getting arrested. One street artist she knows hung around too long after spraying a piece in an alleyway and was discovered by police, she said.
Maybe not the last Gasp in Brookline
By adamg - 7/19/11 - 7:50 amGreg Cook reports Gasp Gallery on Rte. 9 in Brookline has shut its doors but that owners Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard plan to re-open somewhere else in the area this fall.
Covering eyesores until they can be permanently fixed
By lex.galloway - 5/9/11 - 1:32 pm
Imagine City Hall or the Hynes covered in vines.
If Nate Swain has his way, it could happen. For the past couple of years, he's been covering eyesores in the North End with vinyl canvases covered with high-resolution photos. See if you can spot his work in the photo above.
His first project was in a building facing Salem and Prince streets in 2009. He photographed and then printed scenes such as a cat on a windowsill with flowers in pots; a goldfish swimming in a bowl, printed them onto a mesh vinyl back, then installed them over the windows. The idea is to create a sort of an "idyllic" concept, as he calls it.
Drama outside the theater: ART vs. local critic
By adamg - 3/30/11 - 2:29 pmIan Thal provides the Playbill for a struggle between the American Repertory Theatre and local critic Thomas Garvey: ART threatened to boycott the Independent Reviewers of New Englands' annual awards ceremony if Garvey weren't booted from the group. Garvey resigned, but not without directing a few choice words ART's way.
Via Art Hennessey, who has a few thoughts as well.
Some people just shovel snow; he shapes it into dodecahedrons
By lex.galloway - 2/2/11 - 8:36 pm
Most of us dread more snow, but Dan Sternof Beyer is looking forward to it.
Beyer is the artist responsible for the mysterious snowdecahdrons that have shown up in Porter Square and Dewey Square after recent storms. So far this season, he's created about ten large versions of the 12-sided objects and 20 to 30 smaller versions.
In an interview with Universal Hub, Beyer said he creates the snowdecahedrons by packing snow into a dodecahdron-shaped box. But not just any snow. "I've become extremely picky about snow, which I'd never thought I'd be, but it has to be just above freezing, after a large snowstorm so the snow is clean, sticks together, packs well, but isn't soggy," he said.
The curse of the A.R.T.
By adamg - 6/10/10 - 7:07 amBryce Lambert is thinking the Cambridge theater has replaced edgy-but-audience-alienating productions with dull-but-profitable fare, such as "Johnny Baseball:"
... Johnny Baseball, as one would expect and might've read, is wicked conventional, so much so that, if it didn't require such a large cast, I wouldn't be surprised if it became a seasonal theater fixture for tourists, locals, and local non-theater-types alike. I'd rather not get too deep into the plot here, because it's not very interesting, and (unless you’ve kept away from the TV and movie theaters for the last 25 years) you're probably able to fill in most of the blanks. ...
Still, he gives them points for funny local jokes and actors who actually nailed the local accent.
