Brian Goslow, Managing Editor
bgoslow@artscopemagazine.com
For the third straight year, we’ve prepared our November/December issue as we were getting set to return to Art Basel Miami Beach, where we’re once again honored to have been invited as an official exhibitor; if you attend this year’s event, look for us in the Magazine Sector and Collective Booth.
As a preview to Art Basel 2017, which takes place from December 7-10 at the newly renovated Miami Beach Convention Center and nearby at the Collins and SoundScape parks, Nancy Nesvet provides a crystal ball guide to which artists to keep an eye on and assesses how their work has reacted to and been affected by world events of the past year.
Nesvet and Artscope publisher Kaveh Mojtabai will be in Miami Beach providing live reports on our various social media outlets; for easy viewing in one location, download the Artscope app available through the Apple App Store and GooglePlay.
In recent months, we’ve worked hard to expand our online content through a multi-platform of offerings that include more artist interviews and exhibition video shared on Facebook and YouTube, and reviews on the Artscope zine as well as Instagram posts from opening events and weekends at galleries and museums throughout New England.
Where demographics used to play a key role in determining marketing campaigns and coverage, we’re focusing on your responses to our posts online and the turnouts at the shows we cover in the magazine to let us know what you’re interested in and which work is selling.
As 2017 comes to a close, one thing is for sure — as new generations move into our cities, art delivery is changing. Earlier this year, in Framingham, the Springdale Barrel Room at Jack’s Abby stepped in to fill the void created by the loss of Fountain Street Fine Art moving to Boston’s SoWa District and the temporary closing of the Danforth Art Museum by offering the walls of its huge space to hang local artists’ work in its microbrewery tasting and game room.
Many venues are exploring ways to bring in new customers and revenue, partnering with local art institutions for special one-time events and showcases in out-of-town locations in what has become an increasing phenomenon throughout the region. Along with the traditionalclassesandlectures,“sipand paint” nights and yoga mornings have also served to help bring new people into galleries — some for the first time.
Tom Soboleski visited the Velvet Mill Gallery in Stonington, Conn. for an exhibition of works by the two dozen or so artists who have studios in a reinvented former factory mill that shares space with wellness and massage studios, a wine bar, a brewing company, a local cheese shop and a winter farmers market, all with customers who might not have otherwise seen the art on display.
Pop-up galleries are springing up on a regular basis; this November and December, Newbury Street’s Crush Boutique, which specializes in wom- en’s contemporary fashions, will host an exhibition of works by Chatham’s Steve Lyons that was selected by both the artist and store owner to ensure the art and fashion enhanced one another.
it is enthusiastically reviewed by Greg Morell, as is the “Michael Pressman: Fences” photography exhibition at the Main Street Gallery (partially designed by Sol LeWitt) at Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek in Chester, Connecticut, spot- lighted through the words of Tom Soboleski. Fiber arts continue their renaissance in the “Fabrication of Imagination” show at Arts League of Lowell; Flavia Cigliano shares her highlights.
This issue arrives just as many museums, galleries and colleges are putting their fall exhibitions on their walls; our writers preview what we feel are some of the best shows in New England this fall.
Elayne Clift spoke with the curators of the “Sweet Tooth: The Art of Dessert” exhibition open- ing September 23 at Vermont’s Shelburne Museum, while James Foritano walked the streets of Cambridge with Wen-hao Tien to discuss her environmentally-charged
“Weed Out” exhibition that utilizes freshly-pulled plants at the New Art Center in Newton.
Beth Neville traveled from the South Shore to Worcester to get a pre-opening view of Paris-based artist Gabrielle Thierry’s “Musicality of the Water Lilies” exhibition of colored musi- cal scores inspired by Claude Monet’s water landscapes at the College of the Holy Cross, and also spoke by phone with Curtis Hanson and Michael Graves — two of the newest members of the Guild of Boston Artists — about their shared debut exhibition at the Newbury Street institution in October.
And in Boston’s SoWa District, the cold, blank concrete walls underneath the Southeast Expressway were converted into Underground at Ink Block, a collection of murals in a space that’s been transformed into community space. Thanks to the vision of National Development and the hard work of Street Theory’s Liza and Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez in putting developer and artist together, the muralists benefited from both the exposure the new showcase gets them and the collaborative partnership with House of Roulx, who offered prints of their work for sale.
In October, Mojtabai moderated a dis- cussion on “A New Wave of Public Art in the Boston Area” as part of HUBweek Boston; our publisher’s appearance was complemented by an article on the Artscope zine (at artscopemagazine. com) by Suzanne Volmer, looking at how Boston and other cities have used public art to revitalize their urban core.
As museums continue to seek new ways of increasing attendance, non- traditional shows you wouldn’t expect to see there keep popping up. When it was announced that the Worcester Art Museum would be showing “RediscoveringanAmericanCommunity of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard,” Artscope’s J. Fatima Martins, after an initial early view of the work, questioned whether or not the highly important collection belonged at the city’s historical museum as opposed to its art museum. Having grown up in two of the neighborhoods Bullard’s images captured, I can tell you that Martins did a fabulous job of conveying the importance of these images from both a historical and artistic perspective.
Martins also reviews the “Art League of Rhode Island: 18th Annual Elected Members Art Exhibition” at the Bristol ArtMuseuminRhodeIslandandthe“Still Life” exhibition at Connecticut’s Center for Contemporary Printmaking; the trifecta stands among her best writing.
We’ve been happy to hear about a growing number of sales at New England galleries (some of which I’ve had the pleasure of seeing firsthand) and the successful, record-setting fundraisers at institutions that have been long-time advertisers with Artscope, including the Newport Art Museum’s Summer Gala and Wet Paint 2017 and Provincetown Art Association’s sold-out Museum Benefit Gala.
In the midst of renovations to its main facility, the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire has opened Hood Downtown, an offsite gallery centrally located on the town’s Main Street. Marguerite Serkin took in its current “Resonant Spaces: Sound Art at Dartmouth” exhibition that’s concurrently presented at six other locations in the area; she interviewed the museum’s director, John R. Stomberg, about how the gallery is bringing its collection to new audiences and what changes will be seen when the museum reopens in 2019.
There’s so much more covered in the pages ahead; we’re proud of what we feel is one of our most information- packed issues in our almost-12-year history, and we hope it’ll encourage you get out and enjoy New England’s resonating art scene — and hopefully take a few pieces home with you.
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