By James Foritano BOSTON-The press day for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s was a whirl of personalities, expectation, art, architecture and commercialism. For me, the star personality was the Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano. He charmed everyone with his eloquence and humility as he stood in the middle of the new, sleek music hall and thanked all the people who contributed to its final design from the acoustics expert to the director of musical programming, to the board. The music hall is a cube with the same dimensions of height, width and length, which, along with the single row seating, gives it a very democratic feel: no matter where you sit, you won’t be looking over anyone’s shoulder to see the musicians or squinting over distances. It was all very intimate, although spare of ornament. Additionally, and not incidentally, this new hall frees Isabella Gardner’s … [Read more...] about Inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s New Wing
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Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston
By James Foritano BOSTON - Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Letts knows his denizens of Chicago’s uptown. It’s the present, seedy but blossoming with ambiguous promise as a Starbuck opens just across the way from the down-at-the-heels, possibly on-the-way-out donut shop inherited and just barely animated by Arthur Przybyszewsky, played by Will Lebow. Arthur’s parents knew just who and just where they were when they immigrated to Chicago’s uptown from a devastated Poland as World War II came to a close. They were strivers in a land of opportunity where just riding the bus to your own business was a high. As a kid, Arthur was enfolded in this atmosphere of success and striving. Then came the 1950s and ‘60s. Arthur’s parents missed the ride, but Arthur was there in 1966 when Martin Luther King was pelted with firecrackers in Chicago’s Marquette Park. He was there when the Vietnam War … [Read more...] about Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston
Captors at the Huntington Theatre Company
By James Foritano Boston, MA - The action of Evan M. Weiner’s “Captors” at the Huntington Theatre Company’s B.U. Theatre takes place in May of 1960 somewhere on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The play documents the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents, his imprisonment in a safe house and his eventual transport to Israel for trial. The main conceit of the play is that agent Malkin is reliving the action in the safe house as he recounts it to the ghost writer of his memoirs, Cohn, 30 years after the Eichmann trial. Cohn, insisting on accuracy from his desk at stage right, often breaks into and freezes the action to question Malkin about the facts. Malkin at first endorses this quest for strict accuracy and then gradually comes to realize that all is not as cut and dried and as clear a history as Cohn and he would like it to be. Malkin is a fly by the … [Read more...] about Captors at the Huntington Theatre Company
Octopi Gallery Mural brings Street Art Indoors
by Sara Farizan PORTLAND, ME-Street Art has become a more formidable, political and respected medium in recent years with the likes of British Banksy becoming a household name. Part graffiti, part mural and part drawing, street art can bring an idea or a statement to masses of people without them ever even realizing. That's why the Octopi Gallery in Portland, Maine allowed three of their previously featured artists to create a mural of 40 feet in width and 11 feet in height sprawling across two walls. The Octopi gallery is a part of the Ove Bodytherapy experience, a studio that provides massages, acupuncture and yoga. This mind/body locale began to showcase local artists' work on it's walls until four months ago, when the gallery garnered it's own space across from the studio, for the purpose of solely showing artwork. The three artists who decided to venture into this project all … [Read more...] about Octopi Gallery Mural brings Street Art Indoors
Aphrodite and the Gods of Love at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
By Rosemary Chandler BOSTON -- At the entrance of the exhibition, the marble head of Aphrodite floats in the air, as the black metal bar that secures it to its pedestal disappears against the dark wall behind it. Separated from its body centuries earlier, this is all that remains of the once life-sized statue of the beguiling Greek goddess of love and beauty. Her pensive, almond-shaped eyes gaze outwards at her spectators as they enter the latest Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, exhibition, “Aphrodite and the Gods of Love,” and her full lips turn slightly upwards in a mysterious smirk. It is an inexplicable expression akin to the infamous smile of the “Mona Lisa.” Yet unlike da Vinci’s femme fatale, Aphrodite holds no secrets, bearing all before her spectators in the impressive collection of nudes that follows. The show is a collection of 160 pieces drawn largely from the MFA’s permanent … [Read more...] about Aphrodite and the Gods of Love at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Degas and the Nude at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
By Rosemary Chandler BOSTON -- A nude woman lowers herself into an empty metal washbasin, bending her knees and supporting her weight with one hand, while pushing a knot of thick red hair on top of her head with the other. Her head is bent downwards, and she is oblivious to the presence of the large crowd that has gathered behind her, catching her unaware in this intimate moment of her daily life. "The Tub," first exhibited at the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886, continues to captivate viewers at its temporary new home in Boston as part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s latest exhibition, “Degas and the Nude,” filling them with the same voyeuristic pleasure that it first inspired over a century ago in Paris. The work is quintessentially Degas, and it is an exciting inclusion in the show. “Degas and the Nude,” the product of a joint collaboration between the Museum of Fine … [Read more...] about Degas and the Nude at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston