Cultural Institutions and Parks

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Photos: Topping Ceremony at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Gardner’s new wing takes shape
Getting topped
By SCOTT M. LACEY | June 25, 2010

Art in the air conditioning

Local museums keep you cool — and the art's pretty good, too
From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.
By GREG COOK | June 16, 2010

It’s good to be king

TRIST takes Henry VIII outdoors
After being out of the local theater scene for a couple of decades, the Rhode Island Shakespeare Theater (TRIST) is back, staging an outdoor production of Henry VIII at the Roger Williams National Memorial Park, on North Main Street in Providence, through June 26.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | June 15, 2010

Rain check

When bad weather strikes, just go indoors!
We have just the thing to cure your summer-vacation blues: Maine, from the inside.
By ANDREW STEINBEISER | June 16, 2010

Slideshow: Tavares Strachan's ''Orthostatic Tolerance'' at the MIT List Visual Arts Center

Tavares Strachan at the MIT List Visual Arts Center | Through July 11
Tavares Strachan's "Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home" at the MIT List Visual Arts Center through July 11, 2010.
By TAVARES STRACHAN | June 18, 2010

Moving forward

The CMCA Biennial balances past and present
The Center for Maine Contemporary Art is back in full swing after an unexpected winter hiatus.
By ANNIE LARMON | June 01, 2010

Finding a niche

The DeCordova's sculpture; Judi Rotenberg's farewell
The DeCordova's sculpture; Judi Rotenberg's farewell
By GREG COOK | June 04, 2010

Photos: 'The Kennedys' at Peabody Essex Museum

Photos of JFK, Jackie Onassis and family at the PEM through July 18
"The Kennedys” exhibit at Peabody Essex Museum, through July 18
By RICHARD AVEDON | May 19, 2010

Power plays

The Maya and the Kennedys at the Peabody Essex
Some weeks back, I got to listen to Brown University archæology professor Stephen Houston pronounce the throaty, staccato sounds of Maya hieroglyphs carved across a six-foot-wide limestone panel.
By GREG COOK | May 21, 2010

Slideshow: The Maya And The Mythic Sea at Peabody Essex Museum

“Fiery Pool: The Maya And The Mythic Sea,” Peabody Essex Museum through July 18
Mayan works of art at the “Fiery Pool: The Maya And The Mythic Sea,” exhibit
By PHOENIX STAFF | May 19, 2010

An expanding world

Americans look at European modernism
Housed in two galleries at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, “Methods for Modernism: Form and Color in American Art, 1900 to 1925” presents a healthy survey of works by artists featured in the two most definitive venues for introducing European modernism to America.
By ANNIE LARMON | May 05, 2010

High concept

‘Artadia Boston’ at the BCA, plus terracotta at the Gardner
The stars of the “Artadia Boston” exhibit at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery are Raúl González’s manic-Injun drawings.
By GREG COOK | April 06, 2010

Infrastructure bias

Exploring humans + landscapes at Colby
“Experimental Geography” surveys the recent work of 19 international contemporary artists and artist collectives seeking to provide new frameworks for understanding various aspects of human interaction with the environment.
By ANNIE LARMON | April 07, 2010

Potatoes and a pennywhistle on Somerset Street

In the Garden
Drive south on Broad Street past the markets and churches, take a left on Somerset and there, in a clearing of raised garden beds behind a chain-link fence, you will find Phil Edmonds with his peas.
By ELIZABETH RAU | April 02, 2010

Joyride

The Worcester Art Museum shows us ‘Who Shot Rock & Roll’
It is May 1966, in the Prelude Club in Harlem, an Atlantic Records release party.
By GREG COOK | March 24, 2010

Flashback: Art After Hours

A review of Man Ray nightclub
There’s no shortage of nightclubs and bars in Boston, but the sheer magnitude of offerings has been no guarantee of quality. Between the scruffy rock clubs, gay discos, and often pretentious singles bars, there hasn’t been much of a middle ground.
By ROBIN VAUGHN | March 25, 2010

Flashback: Art After Hours

Boston Turkish Film Festival 2010

Divine madness rules the ninth annual Turkish Film Festival
In a scene in Çagan Irmak's IN DARKNESS (2009; April 3 at 3 pm), one of several provocative films in this year's Boston Turkish Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts, a woman explains to a TV interviewer that her political party is neither for Shari'a — extremist Islamic rule — nor for right-wing military coups. Well, good luck to her.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 17, 2010

Re-structuring

A Frederick Lynch introspective at the PMA
Three large oil paintings overwhelm the lobby at the Portland Museum of Art, introducing the show "Division and Discovery: Recent Works by Frederick Lynch," a beautiful and meditative collection found on the fourth floor of the museum.
By ANNIE LARMON | March 17, 2010

Tall stories

Puppets, painted poetry, and the Kennedys
The Institute of Contemporary Art gets down and dirty this spring with Mexican artist Jerónimo López Ramírez, who's better known as DR. LAKRA — or, as they might say in his home of Oaxaca, "Dr. Delinquent."
By GREG COOK | March 11, 2010

The news from No Place

Saya Woolfalk and the feminist 'heretics'
Saya Woolfalk first grabbed people's attention around 2005, with playful-serious installations and videos in which performers masked in bright, patchwork fabric costumes of cartoon leaves and long swinging dreadlocks jumped around small rooms decorated like cartoon paradises.
By GREG COOK | March 10, 2010

Children of the Revolution

Child's Play
Eleven down — three dead on the spot, and two more whisked away to suffer the same fate a bit later.
By MARIANNA FAYNSHTEYN | April 23, 2010

Birth of a museum

A push in Portsmouth
Nobody starts an art museum. Most of the art museums in America were founded in the later 19th century, when esthetics became part of the larger cultural language — the Portland Museum was started in 1882.
By KEN GREENLEAF | March 03, 2010

Seeing is believing

The Emperor visits the Children's Theatre
Emperor Fredrick has a wardrobe problem.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 03, 2010

Cube root

Roni Horn at the ICA, Andrea Fraser at Harvard
"I've been told it's the largest single piece of glass in the world," Helen Molesworth, the Institute of Contemporary Art's new chief curator, said at a press preview last week.
By GREG COOK | March 01, 2010

Subject bias

Still lifes focus on the details at the PMA
"Objects of Wonder" is a mixed bag of a show, which is what it sets out to be.
By KEN GREENLEAF | February 24, 2010

Interplay

The ICA’s concept-driven show
Caitlin Berrigan’s 2009 video Transfer is simple and elemental.
By ANNIE LARMON | February 17, 2010

Bon appétit!

The delicious art of Luis Meléndez
Luis Meléndez himself greets you at the outset of "Luis Meléndez: Master of the Spanish Still Life" at the Museum of Fine Arts. He seems a haughty 31-year-old in this 1746 self-portrait, standing in a fine silk coat and ruffled shirt and holding up a chalk drawing (note the chalk in his hand) of a hunky nude dude.
By GREG COOK | February 09, 2010

Slideshow: The MFA's Luis Melendez exhibit

"Master of the Spanish Still Life," now showing through May 9, 2010
Images of Luis Melendez's show at the MFA
By PHOENIX STAFF | February 09, 2010

Modern times

Does Jen Mergel's appointment mean that the MFA is getting serious about contemporary art?
Does Jen Mergel's appointment mean that the MFA is getting serious about contemporary art?
By GREG COOK | January 06, 2010