List Visual Arts Center

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Boston arts institutions flexed their muscles in 2011

Boom town!
The following rundown of the best art exhibits of 2011 shows how greater Boston is now consistently offering some of the richest institutional art exhibition programs in the country.
By GREG COOK | December 28, 2011

Haacke and Piene at MIT

Natural phenomena
"Hans Haacke 1967" at MIT's List Visual Arts Center is a science museum presentation with the educational explanation stripped away, leaving just wonder.
By GREG COOK | November 15, 2011

Autumn blossoms: Our 10 most anticipated art shows this fall

This season, the galleries are filled with light shows, monster rock and roll, and naked ladies
This fall is a season of celebrations and new beginnings as the Museum of Fine Arts opens its new contemporary art wing, the Institute of Contemporary Art turns 75, the Addison Gallery reopens after fixing its roof, and Brandeis's Rose Art Museum reopens after a mini renovation and settling a lawsuit by backing off from its threat to close for good.
By GREG COOK | September 14, 2011

The proto-web utopian consciousness of Stan VanDerBeek

Psychadelic, man!
In April 1966, sheriff's deputies were hiding in bushes, peering into a mansion that had been turned into a headquarters and commune for LSD guru Timothy Leary and his pals at Millbrook, New York.
By GREG COOK | March 24, 2011

Slideshow: ''Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom'' at the MIT List Visual Arts Center

Stan VanDerBeek | MIT List Visual Arts Center | Through April 3
Images from ''Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom'' at the MIT List Visual Arts Center.
By STAN VANDERBEEK | March 24, 2011

10 must-visit New England art exhibits for early 2011

Gorey's "Enigmas," La Farge's Tahiti, Fig's studios, Perry Welty's voicemail
During the icy months of the gray heart of the Boston winter, art offers a chance for you to travel to the balmy South Seas and, via a brainy conceptual artist, the streets of Mexico City. Winter shows also offer a chance to travel through history, from Rembrandt to overlooked women Pop Artists, from early computer art to Edward Gorey's gothic whimsies.
By GREG COOK | December 29, 2010

Fall Art Preview: Heavy construction

Boston museums take off their hard hats
Over the past decade, museum building has boomed across the region.
By GREG COOK | September 14, 2010

Unholy contraptions

Tavares Strachan's rockets, plus 'The Boat Show' at Drive By, and 'Sensed, Unseen' at GASP
In Tavares Strachan's video The Rocket Launch (2009), two black men in white chemical suits load sugar cane into the back of a three-wheeled mini-truck, then drive down a palm-tree-lined road to a run-down building labeled Bahamas Aerospace and Sea Exploration Center.
By GREG COOK | June 23, 2010

A walk on the wild side

The Combat Zone, plus burlesque, drag, cross-dressing, and the avant-garde
Everyone looks so weary in Howard Yezerski Gallery's gritty documentary photos of Boston's dear departed Combat Zone from 1969 to 1978. The year's still young, but this glimpse into our past from Roswell Angier, Jerry Berndt, and John Goodman may be one of the best shows of 2010.
By GREG COOK | February 16, 2010

Fresh fruit and vegetables

A winter crop of art
The bleakest months of New England winter are ahead of us, so the prospect of leaving your toasty house to see art may not be at the top of your to-do list.
By GREG COOK | January 04, 2010

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Lost in translation

Digital language and Mexican modernism mark the season
Spring can't come soon enough, since it'll be bringing with it some engaging museum shows in and around Boston.
By EVAN J. GARZA | March 19, 2009

Dollhouses and dream states

Memory, sound, time, and toothpicks define the season
Autumn highlights in the museums and the galleries.
By RANDI HOPKINS | September 11, 2008

The devil in the details

‘Drawn to Detail’ and ‘Laylah Ali’ at the DeCordova, Esteban Pastorino Díaz at the SMFA, and Student Loan Art Program at MIT
It’s hard to imagine stopping to look at drawings that don’t coalesce till you let them pull you in and spin you around a bit.
By RANDI HOPKINS | August 28, 2008

Time is on my side

David Claerbout at MIT, Children at the DeCordova, Kabuki Theater at the Peabody Essex, and more
We tend to take the passage of time for granted, reconciling such disparate experiences as 10 minutes spent rushing through lunch and 10 minutes spent waiting for a bus.
By RANDI HOPKINS | January 29, 2008

Tempo tantrum

Artists mess with time, re-enact art history, and hop up on stage in ’08
In 2008, the fourth dimension, time, steps to the fore in the art world.
By RANDI HOPKINS | December 26, 2007

Gods and monsters — and David Hasselhoff

Art: 2007 in review
The Museum of Fine Arts did big things with Napoleon and Edward Hopper, pictures of prostitutes graced the walls of Boston’s two biggest art museums, and all hell broke loose when the Mooninites invaded.
By GREG COOK | December 17, 2007

Jury’s got the verdict

‘Trans’ at Atlantic Works, ‘Red’ at Cambridge Art Association, Caroline Jones and David Joselit at MIT, Ralph Gibson at BU
Two well-judged shows light up the holiday horizon.
By RANDI HOPKINS | December 09, 2007

Turn on the bright lights

Art, women, politics, and food
Art this fall grapples with issues like gender and journalism, personal space and human survival, and what to have for lunch.
By RANDI HOPKINS | September 12, 2007

Going deep

One-person shows dominate, Cyberarts proliferate, and a few artists collaborate
A gaggle of big solo shows share the art waves with that powerful influx of computer-reliant art known as the Boston Cyberarts Festival this season.
By RANDI HOPKINS | March 13, 2007

Who are you?

"Identy Construction" at G-A-S-P, "Sensorium II" at MIT, "Traveling Scholars" at the MFA
I’d hazard that when most of us think of pictures with “hidden meanings,” we don’t envision portraits, a genre that usually entails straight-ahead representations of, well, heads, at least.
By RANDI HOPKINS | January 30, 2007

Return to the edge of the world

The year ahead in art
Photography and new media loom large on the horizon in 2007, with cameras pointed in every direction.
By RANDI HOPKINS | December 27, 2006

Bodies and souls

A year in art
Preserved flayed corpses at the Museum of Science, Americans in Paris at the Museum of Fine Arts, underground art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, beavers at Mass College of Art — it was that kind of year, capped off by the arrival of the new Institute of Contemporary Art.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 19, 2006

Touchy feely

Cecily Brown’s paintings at the MFA, Louise Bourgeois’s dolls in Worcester
Art-world sophisticates are schooled not to hunt for hidden pictures in abstract paintings, but that’s just what Cecily Brown encourages.
By GREG COOK | November 21, 2006

Coming to your senses

“Sensorium, Part 1” and Alix Pearlstein at MIT, Cecily Brown at the MFA
This heady, two-part exhibition examines the influence of technology on the experiences our bodies are having in this world.
By RANDI HOPKINS | October 03, 2006

Fight the power

Artists protest war, scrutinize surveillance, explore usefulness, and embrace couture
Art mixes it up with history and politics, peers closely at electronic surveillance, worries about its own usefulness, traipses down the fashion runway, and brings cool stuff back from China and Puerto Rico in exhibitions opening this fall.
By RANDI HOPKINS | September 13, 2006

Walk on by

Bill Arning tours art at MIT; Alexander Dumbadze examines sculptural form at Brandeis; books and dioramas at NESAD
MIT’s campus is dotted with art — 46 works are listed on its most recent “Public Art Collection Map,” a document that you can download if you want to know what that big thing in front of the Stata Center is, or who made the cube-like piece in front of the library.
By RANDI HOPKINS | July 11, 2006

Cheap thrills

Paw Sox, Penny Slots, and Ponies — so cheap, it might cost you
Summertime inevitably raises the question: what are we going to do with our crazy, hot selves? Summer Guide 2006: Cheap thrills from Bar Harbor to New Haven.
By ELLEE DEAN | June 14, 2006

Talent shows

The 2006 DeCordova Annual, plus ‘Art, Theatre, and Engineering’ at MIT
Amazing but true: each year since 1989, the tireless curatorial team at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park have scoured the New England area to put together a show highlighting artists from the area.
By RANDI HOPKINS | April 28, 2006