Visual Arts
By Bill Marx A number of new pieces on World Books since the last update in September, including my podcast interview with Benjamin Moser about his biography of Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) entitled “Why This World” from Oxford University Press. The Brazilian writer’s challenging stream-of-consciousness technique, lack of political bite, physical beauty and, Moser argues, her…
Read MoreBy Peter Walsh A Tomb Gets its Time Forget Indiana Jones. Archaeology is not about the obvious. Case in point: the Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition, The Secrets of Tomb 10A, opening October 18.
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein Of the 100 or so events scheduled for Essex County’s Eighth Annual Trails and Sails Festival the last weekend of September, culture vultures should not miss Gloucester’s Committee for the Arts tours of Gloucester City Hall’s wall murals, created by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s. Culture Vulture talked about them…
Read MoreBy Gary Schwartz Once every three years since 1992, the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation, originally launched under another name in 1940 to aid the war effort, has awarded a prize to a person or institution in the humanities. It is a generous prize of 50,000 euros, of which two-thirds is to be spent on projects…
Read Moreby Bill Marx Instead of a critique for World Books this past week I finished up a review of Australian writer Kate Grenville’s historical novel “The Lieutenant” for the “Los Angeles Times.” This is a well-written, well-meaning study of understanding between colonized and colonizers in the 18th century Australia; the emphasis is on the experiences…
Read MoreCan you imagine a scholarly press publishing a book about the Mona Lisa without a reproduction of the painting? Or, perhaps a more pertinent example, a book about anti-Semitic stereotypes without an illustration of them? Brandeis professor and author Jytte Klausen was asked to sign what she called a “gag order” by Yale University Press.…
Read MoreVisiting the Frelinghuysen Morris House in Lenox got me thinking about modernist architecture in the eastern part of Massachusetts where Walter Gropius landed as part of the great exodus of “degenerate” artists, scientists, writers and other intellectuals who fled to America from Nazi Germany in the years before the second world war. by Helen Epstein…
Read MoreA most rewarding rainy day activity this rainy summer is a visit to one of the artists’ homes in the Berkshires, many of which are now part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. By Helen Epstein Exterior of the Frelinghuysen-Morris House & Studio, circa 1940. Edith Wharton’s The Mount, Daniel Chester French’s Chesterwood, and…
Read MoreAlmost every visit to the WCMA has piqued my interest so strongly that I’ve often gone straight to the internet or library to read more about what I’ve seen. Edward Steichen’s 1914 photograph “Heavy Roses” by Helen Epstein The Williams College Museum of Art, set back from Williamstown’s main drag and almost indistinguishable from other…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein The extraordinary Eleanor Norcross: educator, collector, painter and daughter of Fitchburg’s first mayor. Have you ever been to Fitchburg? It’s off the beaten path and although I’d heard of its state college, and seen the signs — about five miles north of Route 2 — I’d never ventured into the once-properous, now…
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Arts Remembrance: In Memoriam — Tom Stoppard