Artscope Magazine

New England's Culture Magazine

Artscope Magazine | January/February 2021

Subscribe to the Magazine

A vibrant, dynamic magazine with arts news, reviews and info you can use, delivered right to your door!

Subscribe now

Sign up for our Email Blasts!

Special Artscope updates in your inbox every two weeks!

Sign up

Featured

SEEING PAST THE PANDEMIC: ROBERT DUGRENIER’S GLASS ART IN VERMONT

// Artscope Online, Featured, Visual Arts

by Marta Pauer-Tursi

If you traveled abroad before the pandemic, you may have stopped in at the Paris Ritz and been awed by the round frosted glass elevator shaft that depicts scenes from the Napoleonic Wars, or perhaps the glass chandeliers at the Divan Hotel in Istanbul, or the serpentine glass installation that runs the length of the bar at London’s Dorchester Hotel. All of those are Townshend, Vermont artist Robert DuGrenier’s work. And that’s only a small sampling of his oeuvre. For more than 30 years, DuGrenier has worked from his glassblowing studio in Vermont and a secondary space in New York City. To say that DuGrenier is a prolific artist, is like saying Tiffany’s sells jewelry — where, in fact, DuGrenier’s work is available. When the pandemic hit last March and shutdowns and stay-at-home orders became the norm, DuGrenier, like many artists, found that his scheduled exhibitions were … [Read more...] about SEEING PAST THE PANDEMIC: ROBERT DUGRENIER’S GLASS ART IN VERMONT

NANCY NESVET’S INS AND OUTS 2020/2021

// Artscope Online, Community, Featured

by Nancy Nesvet

Welcome to 2021, although the bounties of 2021 will not begin until the 20th of January and the second and third quarters of the year. As I compile, at Artscope, my hopes and predictions for 2021, and heartily throw out the disasters of 2020, I’m also contemplative in assessing the larger reasons for changes in the art world, our smaller, but no less important or reflective part of the greater world. 2021 will see Trump and Pence out, and Biden and Harris in, the present First Lady out, and the new First Teacher in, the first Vice President of mixed race, Black and brown in; the Second Lady out, and the Second Gentleman in. Red is hopefully all out, blue all in. Jello shots are out; Covid-19 vaccine shots in. Claims of the biggest inaugural crowd ever are out, and plans for the smallest inaugural crowd ever are in. As we pursue our lone lifestyles, ordering for one — or … [Read more...] about NANCY NESVET’S INS AND OUTS 2020/2021

INTERVIEW: BARBARA ROSE TALKS WITH DON KIMES

// Artscope Online, Featured, Interview, News, Visual Arts

by Barbara Rose

I met Don Kimes in the Nineties and have watched his work develop and change over time in response to both personal and artistic challenges. We have had an ongoing dialogue ever since. Recently I saw the work he is including in his exhibition at Denise Bibro Gallery in New York City and we had a chance to talk about how he views his own work and the contemporary art scene in general. Barbara Rose: How Do you feel your work is related to current practice? Don Kimes: Current practice is wide open. Anything, anywhere, without fixed judgement and dependent only upon personal circumstance and acuity. I still tend to wince at the word “practice”, like it’s an out of place interlocutor in the lexicon, though it became commonly used overnight. But it sounds like a nod to the professions, like being a dentist or an attorney, like I should hang a brass shingle outside my studio door with the … [Read more...] about INTERVIEW: BARBARA ROSE TALKS WITH DON KIMES

JUDY CHICAGO’S ACT OF PRESERVATION: FEMINIST ART ARCHIVES ONLINE AND IN WASHINGTON

// Featured, November/December 2019, November/December 2019, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

On October 17, 80-year-old artist Judy Chicago launched a research portal preserving her archive of feminist art at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The portal will serve to bridge collections of Chicago’s work located at Penn State University, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. , and Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library. Some background: In an early work, “The Dinner Party,” now based at the Brooklyn Museum, Chicago resurrected renowned women of the past and gave them a seat at the formerly men’s-only table. In the “Birth Project,” pieces of which now belong to several permanent museum, university and college collections, she treated the topic of birth from all angles, analyzing and commenting on the process. She dealt with the deaths of her first husband and father, in “Bigamy Hood,” part of her “Car Hood” series. In her … [Read more...] about JUDY CHICAGO’S ACT OF PRESERVATION: FEMINIST ART ARCHIVES ONLINE AND IN WASHINGTON

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: SOURCE OF DONORS’ WEALTH ROCKS THE ART WORLD

// Current Exhibits, Featured, November/December 2019, November/December 2019, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

Pittsburgh’s Carnegie family, Maine’s Farnsworths and Arkansas’ Waltons founded museums to enlighten and educate the workers on their railroads and in their steel mills that produced and sold the goods that made their families wealthy, exposing them to the arts. Money from an inheritance earned through the Irish linen trade and investment in mining opportunities by her father, David Stewart, allowed Isabella Stewart Gardner to amass a fabulous art collection that became so large it needed its own museum. Subsequently, the owners of these private collections generously opened their doors to the public. The Morgans cleaned out their attic of treasures taken from colonial outposts to fill multiple large galleries comprising the decorative arts wing at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. They donated Roman sculptures, casts taken from sculptures at Karnak, the Parthenon and Notre-Dame … [Read more...] about ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: SOURCE OF DONORS’ WEALTH ROCKS THE ART WORLD

COLOR FIELDS REVISITED: FLOOR VAN DE VELDE’S RHYTHMIC LIGHT BOXES AT SNHU

// Exhibits, Featured, November/December 2019, November/December 2019, Visual Arts

by Brian Goslow

Floor van de Velde got inspiration for her light boxes — featured in her latest exhibition, “Variations on ColorFields,” which opens on November 8 at McIninch Art Gallery on the campus of Southern New Hampshire University, from a Rothko exhibition at the Harvard Art Museum. “The university decided to hang some of Rothko’s panels in a dining room,” she said. “The panels lost the majority of their pigment over the years and they were considered damaged beyond repair. But then the Harvard Museum decided to try to revive the color by using projected light. Most critics and curators were busy discussing whether this method was as reliable or effective as traditional art renovation techniques, but meanwhile it made for a fascinating show that played with notions of color and light. I found myself returning to the show several times and just sitting there enjoying the luminous color … [Read more...] about COLOR FIELDS REVISITED: FLOOR VAN DE VELDE’S RHYTHMIC LIGHT BOXES AT SNHU