Whitney Museum of American Art

Latest Articles

Review: ''Remember the Ladies'' at the Newport Art Museum

Women's work
Rhode Island is one of the preeminent places for art-making in America, thanks in great part to the Rhode Island School of Design, but what would it be without its pioneering women?
By GREG COOK | July 07, 2011

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

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

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

Works in progress

Photography after Facebook at the PRC, 'Boston Does Boston III' at Proof, and Taro Shinoda at Gardner
Back in October, Minnesota photographer Alec Soth spoke at MassArt. "Facebook: 15 billion uploaded photos," he said. "At its busiest, 550,000 images each second being uploaded. So I've been struggling with that. How do I function as a photographer in that environment?"
By GREG COOK | January 12, 2010

Hope and energy

Looking ahead to Maine's art scene in 2010
As we launch into the next decade with a collapsing economy and apocalyptic themes bleeding into every facet of culture, it's particularly hard to be optimistic about the arts, as yes, they are often the first to go.
By ANNIE LARMON | December 30, 2009

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

Jack of all trades

Ken Greenleaf moves from the word to the walls
Ken Greenleaf is a pretty familiar name around here. His byline has accompanied art reviews for this paper and others dating back to the late '70s. Among other things, I have heard him touted as an "authority on modernism."
By ANNIE LARMON | December 16, 2009

Alternative universe

Boston Expressionism in context
In the 1930s and '40s, Boston painters developed a moody, mythic realism. They mixed social satire with depictions of street scenes, Biblical scenes, and mystical symbolic narratives, all of it darkened by the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.
By GREG COOK | December 16, 2009

MFA neglects to award prize for neglected female artists

Missing Maud Dept.
In 1993, on the occasion of her 90th birthday, friends of prominent Cambridge artist Maud Morgan donated funds to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts to establish a prize in her name. (She died six years later.) The Maud Morgan Purchase Prize would celebrate under-appreciated mid-career Massachusetts female artists.
By GREG COOK | October 07, 2009

Slideshow: Marcel Breuer at RISD

"Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture" at RISD Museum through July 19
The RISD Museum presents "Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture," a major retrospective of the late Bauhaus designer's furniture and buildings, through July 19.
By PROVIDENCE PHOENIX STAFF | April 27, 2009

The Chair Man

A major Breuer retrospective opens at RISD
It is one of the icons of 20th-century design. What distinguishes Marcel Breuer's B34 armchair from 1928 is its materials (fabric seats slung between steel tubing) and the lack of rear legs.
By GREG COOK | April 27, 2009

Video vérité

'Acting Out' at the ICA, plus Eileen Quinlan
Javier Téllez's 2007 black-and-white film "Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See" starts with a catchy premise: he gathered six blind New Yorkers at an empty public pool in Brooklyn to act out the fable of the blind men and the elephant.
By GREG COOK | April 01, 2009

Smoke and mirrors (and elephants) at the ICA

'Momentum 13: Eileen Quinlan' and 'Acting Out: Social Experiments in video' coming to the ICA
Not into wheatpasting and framed posters? The ICA is about to serve up two shows by artists who promise not to pop up on street walls all over the city.
By EVAN J. GARZA | March 03, 2009

The whiff of art

Heide Hatry, Misaki Kawai, Andrew Mowbray, and William Pope.L
The stench came from the rotting corpse — well, it appeared to be a corpse — of a woman who'd been laid out on a metal table like an exhumed murder victim awaiting a coroner's examination.
By GREG COOK | March 03, 2009

I wanna rock

LaMontagne’s vision for Boston art
In 1982, a group of local hardcore punk bands released what would turn out to be a landmark compilation album, This Is Boston, Not L.A.
By GREG COOK | December 12, 2008

Wilderness | (k)no(w)here

Jagjaguwar (2008)
This could prove strenuous, but the album is more contemplative than didactic — a (k)no(w)here that’s difficult to study but easy to inhabit.
By DEVIN KING | October 28, 2008

A look back

A longtime Maine artist gets a mini-retrospective
“Integrity” is the word that comes to mind while walking through the Lois Dodd show at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport.
By KEN GREENLEAF | May 07, 2008

For the birds

Artful lodger comes to MIT
Buckminster Fuller was an odd duck, one who routinely tackled concepts foreign to him.
By IAN SANDS | April 23, 2008

Some Spaniards in the works

‘El Greco to Velázquez’ at the MFA, ‘Artadia Boston’ at the Mills Gallery, Harmonious Noise on the Roof at Tufts, and Animal Estates at MIT’s CAVS
With his elongated forms and spiritual intensity, Greek-born Domenikos Theotokopoulos is often seen as expressing the passion of Counter-Reformation Spain.
By RANDI HOPKINS | April 07, 2008

Ice and fire

Ice Cream’s cold contemporary art, Burning Man’s hot stuff
Burning Man began as a San Francisco pyromaniacs’ beach party in 1986.
By GREG COOK | June 28, 2007

Seal of approval

The ICA plays it safe with Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia is a safe, easy choice for the new ICA’s first big artist retrospective.
By GREG COOK | June 06, 2007

Muscles as art: Hulk meets haute

The aesthetics of oily bodies
This article originally appeared in the February 22, 1977 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
By CAROLYN CLAY | April 09, 2007

Carry on

Mexican shawls and competitive flowers at the Essex Art Center; Rachel Harrison at MIT, Dario Robleto at the MFA
In Mexico, a woven textile that has long been used by women for carrying children and bundles, as well as for warmth and cover, is the focus of “The Rebozo: A Traditional Mexican Women’s Garment.”
By RANDI HOPKINS | February 20, 2007

Playing with history

Kara Walker's civil war
In February 1862, with the Civil War not yet a year old, Union forces took Fort Henry, a Confederate outpost on the Tennessee River, as they began to open up Southern waterways for supply lines.
By GREG COOK | January 30, 2007

The artists’ view

What we talk about when we talk about the new ICA
Recently I was chatting with a local painter, whom I’ll call Picasso Menino, about Boston’s new Institute of Contemporary Art. Slideshow: Architectural images from the new ICA Bold steps: The new ICA sets the agenda for Fan Pier. By David Eisen.
By GREG COOK | November 30, 2006

Odd and vulnerable

Amy Cutler’s fantastical world
The women in Amy Cutler’s drawings and paintings are odd and vulnerable but sometimes a formidable lot.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 28, 2006

Origin of species

Jennifer Bartlett’s breakthrough masterpiece and photographers of the future
When in 1976 Jennifer Bartlett premiered her epic painting Rhapsody, John Russell, the chief art critic of the New York Times, proclaimed it “the most ambitious single work of art that has come my way since I started to live in New York." “Jennifer Bartlett: Early Plate Work” at Addison Gallery of American Art ”50 Photographers of Tomorrow” at Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University
By GREG COOK | October 18, 2006

Hand made

Loïs Mailou Jones and Clare Rojas
Eight years after Loïs Mailou Jones’s death, School of the Museum of Fine Arts curator Joanna Soltan is proclaiming her to be “among the most significant African-American artists of the 20th century.”
By GREG COOK | October 04, 2006

Print the legend

Providence’s ‘Wunderground’ and MassArt’s ‘Crafty’
This exhibit offers an eye-popping, floor-to-ceiling survey of practically every poster produced to advertise under-the-radar Providence shenanigans from 1995 to 2005. Slideshow: Images from Wunderground
By GREG COOK | September 28, 2006