With all the (deserved) negativity about the MBTA’s Silver Line, it’s nice to have some encouraging developments. I haven’t been to the new Courthouse Station in the South Boston waterfront district, but Robert Campbell’s review in the Globe is mostly positive, calling it "one of the remarkable new spaces in Boston." (I do also like […]
So I made it yesterday to the MFA, to see among other things the Ralph Lauren car exhibit. The place was crowded, and the museum’s apparent plan to bring in straight men by focusing on everything but art seems to be working. It was definitely packed enough to require counter-clockwise viewing. I’d complained about the […]
Well, well, the Ralph Lauren Klassy Kar Kollection is finally coming to the MFA. Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against treating cars as aesthetic objects, even (especially) under the auspices of a museum exhibit. Museums certainly have a role as presenters of fine arts, but opening up the gates to understanding the aesthetic […]
I’m no Susan Sontag expert. I’ve read little of her writing. Still, I think that David Sucher is prematurely dismissive in saying that she has no relevance for architecture.
With all due respect to the dead, to Sontag… did Sontag ever say much of anything about the built (or natural, for that matter) environment? Just curious. […]
Part occasioned by a conference on the topic and part inspired by a tremendous personal photograph collection in its possesion, Boston University has started running an exhibit of vernacular photography. Essentially, the concept is similar to that of found photography, without the connotation of the Artist discovering the objects and transforming them, a la ready-made, […]
Jon Chait’s op-ed on the National Endowment for the Arts has been talk of the day. Arguing that the Democrats should find a compromise issue in abolishing arts funding, he writes,
[L]et’s face it, the NEA is in large part a way of forcing the NASCAR set to subsidize the art house set.
None of that would […]
Via fellow Brunescan Jonathan Ichikawa, I’ve come across this great digital photo. Go read the details of its genesis - it’s a good story. My amazement at hardy flash cards aside, I just find it a beautiful photograph. How much longer before the aesthetics of digital photography no longer seem novel?
Mark my words: abstract expressionism will soon be the new sofa painting. That was the epiphany I had last night at a gallery exhibition of the works of a minor abstract expressionist, Henry Botkin. By minor, I don’t mean to disparage - I found the works quite wonderful, in fact - but rather to suggest […]
Has anyone noticed that Herbert Muschamp’s review of the Rem Koolhaas new building, Seattle’s Central Library, contains not one but three uses of the term bling-bling? He even adds an emphatic Bling! to one of the captions to the slide show. I know the Times is trying to be a little more current in their […]
Archie Campbell Hee Haw village comes to Cambridge
(Source: The Boston Globe)
The newest addition to MIT is easy to ridicule. The cartoonish windows floating over stylized abstractions of what ‘building’ should be suggest not contemplative use of space but rather amusement park kitsch. A Computer Lab That Defies Gravity. What’s more, as Alex Beam notes in […]
For the dissertation, I’ve lately been reading up on the founding of MoMA’s film library in the 30s. Looking back, it seems such a seminal time for hierarchy of art and culture in the US. Not only was the museum taking popular, mass-media products seriously as art - with their own masterpieces, movements and aesthetics […]
I’d like to take some space here to extends congratulations to a college friend of mine, Wade Guyton, whose work was chosen to be part of this year’s Whitney Biennial. A great honor, needless to say. The exhibit just opened, so I’ve yet to go down to see it, but will soon. I urge you […]
From the Globe, more on the MFA’s recent Degas acquisition…
THANKS BUT NO THANKS That’s the answer WGBH-TV’s ‘’Greater Boston’’ got this week when it invited the folks at the Museum of Fine Arts to talk about their pricey new acquisition, Degas’s ‘’Duchessa di Montejasi With Her Daughters, Elena and Camilla.’’ The show’s producers figured George […]
The Globe reports that the masterpiece that the MFA is eyeing is a Degas painting, “The Duchessa di Montejasi With Her Daughters Elena and Camilla.” (reproduction here). Still a couple of unknowns: the Globe says painting may be worth $40M, but is that the asking price given the MFA? If so, why would they rush […]
The Museum of Fine Arts has auctioned off two Degas pastels and a Renoir painting for a total of $14.5M. Given the utter popularity of the MFA’s Impressionist collection, one has to wonder what’s going on. Apparently, the museum is raising the funds to buy some undisclosed 19th c. French masterpiece. But the mystery is […]