artscope magazine: July/August 2008 Welcome Statement: Brian Goslow, managing editor Letters to the Editor Past, Present, Future: ANISH KAPOOR ANDREW SAFTEL: How do we get there? WEDDED BLISS: The Marriage of Art and Ceremony A POLITIC, Gallery XIV El Greco To Velázquez: Art during the reign of Philip III Luisa Rabbia: Travels with Isabella, Travel Scrapbooks 1883/2008 Collector's Choice: Late 19th Century Vibrations OFF THE WALL: 2008 Annual members’ Juried exhibition Featured Artist Laurence Young An Artful Touch: An Artful Touch Gallery Everday Monuments: the Photographs of Jerome Liebling: SAM FEINSTEIN (1915-2003): A retrospective DORA ATWATER MILLIKIN: Geometry of Place Nancy Craig: New Paintings and Works on Paper, and Romolo Del Deo: New Sculpture and Bronze Furniture ALEX KATZ AND FRIENDS / THE GLEANERS BLACK WOMANHOOD: Images, Icons, And Ideologies of the African Body 215 College Street Artists' Cooperative Gallery Kevin Gilmore: Recent Paintings Paintings: Stephen Courbois, Sculpture: Pat Musick Penelope Jencks: Sculpture in Bronze, Terracotta and Plaster Theater: Counter Productions Theater: Ko FEST Music: Marblehead Summer Jazz Concerts and Festival of Arts Dance: Bates Summer Dance Festival Musings: FUNG WAH ADVENTURE Capsule Previews: May/June 2008

OFF THE WALL: 2008 Annual members’ Juried exhibition James Foritano Danforth Museum of Art 123 Union Avenue Framingham, Massachusetts Through August 3 BEHIND A PLAIN FAçADE, THE MEMBERS’ SHOW AT THE DANFORTH MUSEUM IS A CORNUCOPIA OF ART FILLED WITH SURPRISES TO ATTRACT THE STEADY GAzE. WHEN I ARRIVED IN FRAMINGHAM IT WAS DRIZZLING COLD, BUT WITH SUCH A QUANTITY OF QUALITY, I FELT LIKE I WAS STEPPING ONTO A WARM BEACH SHELVING TOWARDS LAPPING BLUE WATERS. I KEPT MY PEN AND NOTEBOOK DRY, BUT BARELY. Director Katherine French showed me around while explaining the genesis of this landfall. She and her staff have been diligently stirring the waters of New England to bring artists of talent and ambition into the fold of membership, welcoming them with annual group shows of juried paintings. Add a strong selective intelligence to this mix, such as Institute of Contemporary Art curator Carole Anne Meehan, and voila, you have roomfuls of art to be proud of, for art lovers to feast upon and for artists themselves to spy out the competition and expose their creativity to vital cross-fertilization. Perfect? Not quite. Membership and submissions to member shows have been growing vigorously. Enough so that when guest curator Meehan had filled her allotted space there was still too much evidence of quality to permit to slip away. So, French and her staff hauled their permanent collection into temporary storage and filled two more galleries with additionally selected works. And it works! On the principle of “last shall be first” I plunged to the end of the two galleries of additionally selected works to a tiny room where I came upon Eleonora Lecei’s apocalyptic chickens, “# 1 and #2.” They reminded me of nothing else I’d seen before, except perhaps Medardo Rosso’s poignantly modeled wax busts. They evoked both strutting, clucking barnyard chickens, and also two ghostly avian individuals with an uncanny aura of apocalypse. Who knew? I left the two chickens and a small oil painting of a donkey spreading its front legs fetchingly to drink in a pool just beyond the picture’s foreground, and stepped into a world of wings. Just a word about organization is perhaps due. French and her staff have grouped paintings not rigidly but just tightly enough so that there is often a family resemblance of Read the entire article in our magazine pages...