Visual Arts

Culture Vulture: Tracking the Transcendentalists

May 25, 2010
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There are dozens of excellent books about the Alcotts, Emersons, Thoreau, and Hawthorne but reading them can’t beat actually walking through the places where the people actually lived. By Helen Epstein “We are all going to be made perfect,” wrote ten-year-old Louisa May Alcott in June of 1843, “This day we left Concord in the…

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Visual Arts: Deaccession — The Deadly Sin

May 18, 2010
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By Gary Schwartz On February 21, 2007, I had the honor of delivering the Third Annual Lecture of the Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance at the Getty Research Institute. My subject was “Rembrandt’s paper trail,” but that is not the subject of this column. What keeps coming to mind is an exchange…

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Coming Attractions in Jazz: May 2010

May 4, 2010
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By J. R. Carroll The academic calendar winds down in May, but jazz in New England just begins the transition to summer in a month packed with tributes and celebrations. Substitute vodka for cachaça and you get a caipiroska; mix three Russians and two South Americans and you get Tridos, an intoxicating twist on Latin…

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Classical Music Sampler: May 2010

April 28, 2010
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By Caldwell Titcomb May 1: The month kicks off with an unusual concert celebrating the noted tuba player Kenneth Amis, who joins the MIT Wind Ensemble. Amis will play his own “Concerto for Tuba” (2007), along with the premiere of his “Bell-Tone’s Ring,” and pieces by famous European composers. At MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts…

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Visual Arts: The Transparent Connoisseur 2

April 17, 2010
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The issues might seem highly technical and of interest only to specialists, but I think they do matter. In the first place they matter as a corrective to our understanding of Rembrandt, but they also matter for the critical insights they offer into the techniques and practices of scholarship. By Gary Schwartz Earlier columns were…

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Classical Music Review: Yo-Yo Ma

March 28, 2010
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Reviewed By Caldwell Titcomb Yo-Yo Ma is the greatest living cellist. Now 54, he has been playing the cello for 50 years amassing a huge number of awards and other honors along the way. The Celebrity Series coaxed him home from his world-wide touring for a sold-out Symphony Hall recital on March 26 with British…

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Theater Review: A Poetic ‘Apple’

March 24, 2010
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Imagine this day. See it in your mind. The sun on your face. The spring in your mouth. Your heart deep inside. No future. No past. No time. Just this day. This moment. — Apple by Vern Thiessen Apple by Vern Thiessen. Directed by Greg Maraio. Presented by Phoenix Theatre Artists and Company One, at…

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Film Review: The Industrial Cultural Complex and ‘The Art of the Steal’

March 21, 2010
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It’s difficult at first to think of museums and charities as villains, but this documentary does a good job of showing just how much of America’s non-profit art world has been swallowed up by commerce and power brokers. The Art of the Steal. Directed by Don Argott. At the Coolidge Corner Cinema and Kendall Square…

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Visual Arts: The Beauty of Bars of Color within Squares

February 24, 2010
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Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing. —Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” 1967 Bars of Color within Squares, a permanent installation in MIT’s Green Center, Cambridge, MA. Finding Bars of Color within Squares. Photo: George Bouret Reviewed by Yumi Araki Hidden between three buildings surrounding Massachusetts Institute of…

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Coming Attractions at Museums: February 2010

February 5, 2010
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By Peter Walsh Luis Meléndez: Master of the Spanish Still Life, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA through May 9. Locked into a low-status, unprofitable niche, talented Spanish still-life painter Luis Meléndez (1716–1780) made little money and achieved even less fame during his lifetime. He is said to have complained to the king, who never…

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