Founded in 1969, the Fuller Craft Museum begins the celebration of its 50th year with the opening of “Striking Gold: Fuller at Fifty” on September 7, and its 50th Anniversary Gala that takes place on Saturday, October 19. The landmark exhibition aims to celebrate the museum’s rich past and provide a look at its future direction through the works of 57 artists for whom gold is central to their work. The exhibition was co-curated by Fuller Craft Museum Chief Curator Beth McLaughlin (BM) and Suzanne Ramljak (SR), an art historian, writer, curator and former editor of Metalsmith magazine. Artscope Magazine’s managing editor, Brian Goslow, shared questions with them on the exhibition and the museum’s anniversary. How was “Striking Gold” selected as the theme for “Fuller At Fifty?” BETH MCLAUGHLIN (BM): A few years back, we started discussing Fuller Craft’s upcoming 50th anniversary and … [Read more...] about BETH MCLAUGHLIN & SUZANNE RAMLJAK: FULLER’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY IS PURE GOLD
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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 WELCOME: FROM BRIAN GOSLOW
Just as we were readying to go to press with this issue, Richard Florida, whose 2002 book, “The Rise of the Creative Class” popularized the concept of “The Creative City” and subsequently, the creative economy and the importance it plays in the development and success of a city looking to reinvent and reinvigorate itself through the arts, announced the results of a new survey on citylab.com that found that a large portion of our country’s workers could be classified as members of the country’s creative class. “The class composed of knowledge workers, techies, and cultural creatives is a key force in the economic growth of U.S. cities,” Florida wrote. “More than 55 million workers are members of America’s creative class, or above 35 percent of the workforce.” Based on 2017 figures, 46.8 percent of Boston-Cambridge-Newton Metro Area’s workers, 1,230,882 in total, fall under this … [Read more...] about SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 WELCOME: FROM BRIAN GOSLOW
LOVE LETTERS: MILLER WHITE COVERS YOU IN LOVE
Susan Danton, owner of Miller White Fine Arts on Cape Cod, said the exhibit “Love Letters,” that she originated and curated, was inspired by an 1846 letter from Gustave Flaubert to his lover, Louise Colet: “I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die.” If you are wondering if there is a further French connection, no, she isn’t a descendant of the French revolutionary Georges Jacques Danton. Her stockbroker father changed their surname to Danton. Danton has multiple raisons d’êtres for the exhibit, calling it “an evocative inquiry into physical love, from gender to sex to sexual orientation.” Motivated in part by a “sociopolitical agenda,” to wit, the Me Too Movement, “Love Letters” is also an antidote to the hate we are seeing in our nation and “a way to provoke a discussion … [Read more...] about LOVE LETTERS: MILLER WHITE COVERS YOU IN LOVE
Public and Private: John Buron and Abigael McGuire at AS220 Project Space and Reading Room
Two individual installations by John Buron and Abigael McGuire, opposites from one another in terms of materials, inception source and purpose, yet similar in how they reveal contemporary relevant concerns, are on view now through August 31 at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island. The focus of today's contemporary culture is attention to addressing the interior personal (private lives) in combination with exterior tangible (public culture). How do Buron and McGuire do this? Abigael McGuire's "Energies and Poetries," exhibited in the Project Space, is a three-part collection of drawings — two series of flat mixed-media abstract line drawings, and a series of text scrolls - that explore the emotionality and power of gesture line showing that the line itself is both abstract and vague — energy — and also representative of reality — poetry. John Buron's "Displacement" is a mixed-media and … [Read more...] about Public and Private: John Buron and Abigael McGuire at AS220 Project Space and Reading Room
DOUGLAS BREAULT: SOFT FOCUS AT FORT POINT ARTS COMMUNITY MAIN GALLERY
On view now through August 5, eight mixed media collage works, including a sculpture, by Douglas Breault, are featured in “Soft Focus,” an exhibition at the Fort Point Arts Community Main Gallery showing some of the best approaches to contemporary conceptual art happening right now. The works on view are a perfect blending of physicality and intellectualism. Breault is a visual composer of subtle narratives, at first appearing completely abstract engaging only form and materials, but then slowly revealing poignant, mysterious and poetic stories. For Breault, the art arrives from a place of realism. From a solid place, he allows the materials themselves to express their true rawness and emotive situations to live and expand out, transmuting into unexpected ideas. What appears as happenstance and chaos is organized, purposeful and planned. From physical real points, Breault then pushes … [Read more...] about DOUGLAS BREAULT: SOFT FOCUS AT FORT POINT ARTS COMMUNITY MAIN GALLERY
The Bauhaus and Harvard at the Harvard Art Museums
If you’re curious about painting, architecture, sculpture, woodcuts, textiles or any of the allied arts, now is the time (or really past time!) to scurry to the Harvard Art Museums, head straight to Special Exhibitions on the third floor and … linger, seriously. It is, after all, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, and Harvard has been celebrating already since February! And you? The important thing is not to blame yourself. Not that you don’t deserve it, but save it at least until the end of July when this celebration finally runs out of breath. And, if you’re still reading, don’t read every label, for goodness sake, or you’ll be there ’til the end of July, panting! Celebrate, if lately, with the rest of the party by realizing that if the Bauhaus knew anything, it knew, and knows still, the truth of that old saw: “One picture is worth a … [Read more...] about The Bauhaus and Harvard at the Harvard Art Museums