Visual Arts
Though 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…
Read MoreThe mad rush to digitization brings up another host of new issues. Unlike a printed book, digital media requires a change of technologies—computers, software, imaging—to interpret the information. Will digitization serve the long-term interests of knowledge as well as the media it is replacing? It’s unlikely. By Peter Walsh. When we look back from, say,…
Read MoreIn practical terms the Virtual Reality helmet has still not lived up to its potential. Another device has come along, however, that can convey as much information, though without the total visual immersion of Virtual Reality. This is nothing other than the humble cell phone . . . By Gary Schwartz. In 1997 I was…
Read MoreWhat An Object of Beauty proves is that while people were fixated on his Hollywood day job, Steve Martin has made himself into a genuine novelist who gives the art world over the last 20 years an exquisitely balanced sort of attention. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin. Grand Central Publishing,295 pages, $26.99. By…
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Arts Remembrance: In Memoriam — Tom Stoppard