Visual Arts
What the artist didn’t count on was the popularity of the Kendall Band, coupled with its fragility relative to the strength and number of its users, would result in frequent breakdowns. The Kendall Band was the only interactive piece of public art in the MBTA’s “Arts on the Line” program, and the agency had no…
Read MoreThirty years of Eric in the Evening, jazz in public spaces and libraries, jazz ensembles and their social networks, and getting the word out about jazz. (First of a three-part series for Jazz Week.)
Read MoreTo look back and forth from “Las Meninas (after Velázquez)” to the mirror that reflects it is to experience, simultaneously, a joy in David Ording’s accomplishment and a longing based in recognition of its source, which is love—of Velázquez, of labor, of painting.
Read MoreThough unquestionably didactic, Skip Schiel’s images are also haunting glimpses of the perilous nature of life in Gaza. The photographs never feel invasive or forced; they simply capture moments of intimate truth between photographer and subject.
Read MoreSuccess assured? Critics and others discuss whether the MFA’s new wing, The Art of the Americas, lives up to the hype generated by the opening in the latest Judicial Review.
Read MoreI have a weakness for cosmic audacity. The history of religions, which I studied before art history, is full of examples that give me a deep inner thrill.
Read MoreHighlights this month in museums around New England include an exhibition of poetic and playful furniture, photographs and videos that radically rethink how a museum should treat art objects, and a show featuring an African artist who specializes in large, shimmering sculptures composed of recycled liquor bottle tops. By Peter Walsh. The van Otterloo Collection,…
Read MoreNo one is safe in the world of Edward Gorey: “From Number Nine, Penwiper Mews, There is really abominable news:/ They’ve discovered a head/ In the box for the bread, / But nobody seems to know whose.” Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey (1925–2000) will be at the Boston Athenaeum (10 1/2 Beacon St.…
Read MoreThe snow is gone, daffodils are coming up in Central Park, and there are terrific shows in all of the major New York museums. The three I saw—at the Guggenheim, the Neue Galerie, and the Whitney —all draw on the early part of the twentieth century when artists in Europe and the United States were…
Read MoreIt would have been easy to make an entire season out of the ideas the Boston Chamber Music Society compressed into one afternoon; as it is, the wealth of material had the audience buzzing during the two intermissions. Some found the multi-media presentation too much of a good thing. I found it exhilarating and challenging…
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Music Commentary: A Mystery Solved on the 50th Anniversary of the Release of “Queen II”