Saturday, January 23, 2010

Bread and Puppet at BCA next week

















Bread and Puppet Theater of Vermont performs at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama next week. Events begin with an opening reception for founder Peter Schumann’s art exhibit “Relics of the Papier Mache Religion” from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25. That night Schumann will give a talk, the touring company will perform short skits, and Michael Romanyshyn will play music.

The company performs its poetic, political show “Tear Open The Door Of Heaven” (pictured above) at 7 p.m. Thursday to Sunday, Jan. 28 to 31. General admission tickets are $12. Students and seniors pay $10.

The company performs its family-friendly “Dirt Cheap Money Circus” at 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 30 and 31. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $5 for students, seniors and preschool children.

Bread and Puppet Theater, Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama, 539 Tremont St., Boston, Jan. 25 to 31, 2010.

Full disclosure: The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research will be exhibiting our photos of Bread and Puppet Theater at the BCA Cyclorama during Bread and Puppet’s run there. So note that we are horribly biased in favor of the theater. Most of the time.

NEJAR’s Bread and Puppet photos at BCA















The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research will be exhibiting our photos of Bread and Puppet Theater at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama during Vermont company’s run there all next week. These include photos of the troupe’s circuses, pageants and parades in Vermont and Boston over the past couple years. If you’d like to buy some, go here.

The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research’s photos of Bread and Puppet Theater, on view at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama, 539 Tremont St., Boston, Jan. 25 to 31, 2010.

Photos by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research.



Friday, January 22, 2010

Vote for 2009 New England Art Awards

The 2009 New England Art Awards is a contest to honor the best art made here and exhibits organized here in 2009. And we want you to help us pick the winners.

Everyone is welcome to vote here. Winners will be chosen by (1) local active art journalists and (2) anyone else who wants to vote – and will be announced in terms of these two categories of voters.

Winners will be announced at the 2009 New England Art Awards Ball at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 8, 2010, at the Burren, 247 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts. The event is free and open to all. Creative attire is encouraged.

More details here.

William Stover is leaving MFA

William Stover, assistant curator of contemporary art at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, is leaving the museum in the wake of the institution naming Boston Institute of Contemporary Art curator Jen Mergel as its new curator of contemporary art on Dec. 22.

Word on the street is that Stover resigned at the very end of December, and it’s unclear where he might be headed. Stover did not respond to several attempts to contact him over the past couple weeks. An MFA spokesperson writes, “We cannot discuss personnel matters as part of our human resource policy.”

Stover joined the MFA around 2002, coming from New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art, where he had been a curatorial administrator and publications manager. Like other contemporary curators at the museum, his early shows here evidenced curatorial ambition and wit – like his exhibition of Cerith Wyn Evans’s blinking chandeliers in 2004 – but more recent shows seemed to reflect a diminished sense of what could be accomplished (should I say “tolerated”?) inside the MFA bureaucracy.

Previously
Jan. 8, 2010: More on Mergel going to MFA.
Dec. 22, 2009: Mergel leaving ICA for MFA.
Dec. 22, 2009: Mergel departure leaves ICA with one curator.
July 30, 2009: Baume leaving ICA.
Dec. 5, 2008: Brutvan hired by Norton Museum.
July 11, 2008: Brutvan leaving MFA.
Sept. 15, 2007: Saywell named MFA's contemporary art czar. And MFA confirms appointment of Saywell as director of west wing.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Farewell to Stairwell and Yes















From our December report on the closings of Stairwell Gallery in Providence and Yes Gallery + Studio in Warren, Rhode Island:
More closings and a question: Can galleries survive here?

2009 was a crappy year for the arts as the lousy economy has pushed venerable institutions like the Rhode Island School of Design to cut staff, Brown University's Bell Gallery to leave a curatorial position unfilled, and galleries in places like New York and Boston to shutter in droves. The latest bad news is that Stairwell Gallery on Broadway and Yes Gallery + Studio in Warren are closing.

Stairwell co-founders Natalie Purkey and Haley O'Connor are shy about discussing the details with me, but Purkey says "[we're] relinquishing our storefront space, and will be continuing Stairwell projects in a more free-form manner." Think something like the exhibits they curated at Boston University late last year and in New York. In the meantime, they plan to focus on their own artmaking. O'Connor e-mails that she's "headed west to participate in the Mountain School of the Arts in LA. Natalie has a few shows lined up, the first in Baltimore this winter."
Read the rest here.

Pictured from top to bottom: An opening at Yes Gallery + Studio and the front of Stairwell Gallery.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

“Godowsky Color Photography Awards” at PRC


















From our review of the “Godowsky Color Photography Awards” exhibit at the Photographic Resource Center:
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?"

Soth was channeling a deep anxiety in art photography today. It's a golden age, particularly for the democratization of the medium. But much as the rise of photography in the early 20th century made realist painting seem superfluous, the abundance of digital photography today can make realist photography feel redundant. So art photographers are left frustrated and looking for less traveled territory.

That search has hastened a reconsideration of the medium that art photographers have pursued since the height of "Decisive Moment" documentary photography at mid century. Since then, they've favored formal posed portraits (often shot with old-style cameras), offhand snapshots, and ever more complex digital manipulation. Recent exhibits at Boston University's Photographic Resource Center have highlighted formal experiments in which photographs become like graphs charting the movement of stars or the major colors in compositions.

The PRC's current show honoring four winners of the Leopold Godowsky Jr. Color Photography Awards, which the Center organizes, finds artists pushing photography ever more into fiction.
Read the rest here.

“Godowsky Color Photography Awards” Photographic Resource Center, 832 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Nov. 13, 2009, to Jan. 24, 2010.

Pictured from top to bottom:
Alejandro Chaskielberg, "The Scape," 2008; Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, "Ice Yacht," 2009; Curtis Mann, "Abstract, Soldier (Baghdad, Iraq)," 2008; and Claudia Angelmaier, "La petite Baigneuse," 2008.


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Ruga named director of PRC

Glenn Ruga of Concord has been named the new executive director of the Photographic Resource Center, the Boston nonprofit announced today. He is expected to begin work on Feb. 22, filling the shoes of Jim Fitts.

In 2008, Ruga founded socialdocumentary.net, a website and organization devoted to documentary photography. For 25 years, he was owner and creative director of Visual Communications, a graphic design studio in Lowell. From 1993 to 2006, Ruga founded and ran the Center for Balkan Development, an non-governmental organization “advocating for justice in the Balkans and providing humanitarian and reconstruction assistance for victims of genocide.”

“Boston Does Boston III” at Proof






















From our review of “Boston Does Boston III," which just closed at Proof:
Proof Gallery's third annual round-up of local talent, "Boston Does Boston III," invites five artists to invite one other artist each to join them in the show that creates a crowd-sourced snapshot of the city's art scene. This year's edition feels like dispatches from dissolute, dumb-ass-but-still-glam Great Recession America. "Cheap and beautiful seem like a good combination right now," writes Kimberly Hennessy of Arlington.
Read the rest here.

“Boston Does Boston III,” Proof, 516 E. 2nst St., South Boston, Dec. 12, 2009, to Jan. 16, 2010.

Previously:
“Boston Does Boston II” at Proof.

Pictured from top to bottom: Justin Kemp's installation “Trap”; Jamie Horgan's drawing “Sunfish” (detail); Kimberly Hennessy's installation “I'll Probably Wear All Black To My High School Reunion”; Fredo Conde's sculptures "Briefcase" and “Distress Signal One”; Jess Wheelock's installation “How to Win Friends and Influence People”; Marina Pinsky and Carter Seddon's installation “Think About How Many People See You on Your Way to Work”; Sam McKinniss's oil paintings “The Rainbow," “Sunbather” and ”Jonathan Richman”; Katie Mansfield's installation “Times”; and Steve Locke's painting “The Slow Reveal."







Monday, January 18, 2010

Vote for the 2009 New England Art Awards






















The 2009 New England Art Awards is a contest to honor the best art made here and exhibits organized here in 2009. And we want you to help us pick the winners.

Everyone is welcome to vote here. Winners will be chosen by (1) local active art journalists and (2) anyone else who wants to vote – and will be announced in terms of these two categories of voters.

Winners will be announced at the 2009 New England Art Awards Ball at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 8, 2010, at the Burren, 247 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts. The event is free and open to all. Creative attire is encouraged.

How to vote:
We’ve automated voting this year – and our robots are standing by to receive your picks. You are welcome to vote in as many categories as you like or to leave lots of blanks. Please invite your friends to vote too. Votes must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24, to be counted. The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research will tally the votes. Nominees with the most votes in each category will win.

Voting will only be accepted via the robot voting form. We ask each voter to submit a name and e-mail address to prevent fraud. Cheaters will be banished. If you spot factual errors in the ballot, please send corrections here.

The aim of the awards, which are organized by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, is to promote a more exciting local art scene by encouraging and celebrating the work of artists and curators active in New England (except Yalies).

What’s happened so far:
The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research invited everyone to make nominations in late December and more than 80 people made submissions. (Thank you.) We asked readers to volunteer to help us cull the nominations and got four volunteers and then recruited two more folks to pitch in. This team – Scott Davis, a painter based in Waldoboro, Maine; Franklin Einspruch of Artblog.net; Christian Holland of BigRedAndShiny.com; Dennis Kois, director of DeCordova Sculpture Park + Museum; Boston painter Matt Murphy; and Neal Walsh of AS22o (thank you, fellas) – helped us narrow down the nominations to the final voting ballot that we present here.

To those of you who received nominations but did not make the final ballot, please keep at it. We want you to kick ass in 2010 and be on next year’s ballot.