BOSTON ATHENAEUM’S WORKS ON PAPER Franklin W. Liu Nestled with quiet dignity on Boston’s bustling Beacon Hill since 1849, and just a stone’s throw from the Massachusetts State House, is the Boston Athenæum, one of the oldest, manifestly resourceful, independent libraries in the United States. Walking within its hallowed halls, with no need for reminder, researchers and visitors alike automatically slow down their gait and whisper in a reverential tones to avoid disturbing others on the premises. When one pauses to sit and enjoy a book in the warm glow of a long row of desk lamps capped with pleasing emerald green shades, one sees that most reading rooms are flanked by life-size, exquisite, pristine marble busts of noteworthy societal benefactors; a graceful ambiance permeates and is restorative to one’s psyche. Boston Athenæum is a hidden, precious gem housing … [Read more...] about NEW ENGLAND’S CONTEMPORARY CHARACTER

BEARING WITNESS TO TRAGEDY Elayne Clift I was born a Jew on March 20, 1943. One week after 3,000 people just like me Perished in Cracow, I began to live. I began to live one month before How many Jewish lives ended in Warsaw? In Budapest? In Bergen Belsen? But for an ocean, and other gifts of fate, I might have been among them. I wrote those lines after seeing the film “Schindler’s List” some years ago. I thought about them recently when I visited the powerful exhibition “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross,” on display for the first time in America at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. My poem might well have asked how many Jewish lives ended in Lodz. The answer is unbearable. Of the more than 160,000 people rounded up by the Nazis and sealed off from the world by barbed wire in the Lodz Ghetto of 1940 to 1945, only 877 survived. Henryk Ross … [Read more...] about HENRYK ROSS AT THE MFA

THE ARTIST’S EYE DRAWS US IN Suzanne Volmer “Matisse in the Studio,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through July 9, is the MFA’s spring/summer blockbuster. The show, jointly organized by the MFA and the Royal Academy of Arts, London in partnership with the Musée Matisse, Nice, includes “rare pairings of Matisse’s masterpieces with objects of inspiration.” MFA director Matthew Teitelbaum explained that “Matisse in the Studio” is an opportunity to consider “the connections across borders, sensibilities and functions that an artist’s eye can help us to see.” MFA curator Helen Burnham, Ann Dumas of the Royal Academy of Arts and Ellen McBreen, an associate professor at Wheaton College, co-curated “Matisse in the Studio” as an examination of Matisse’s artistic growth in relation to objects in his collection that inspired the trajectory of his innovation. The show … [Read more...] about MATISSE IN THE STUDIO

A RETROSPECTIVE ODE TO FEARLESSNESS Flavia Cigliano The current retrospective of prints by Frank Stella at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy is stunning, spectacularly revealing the evolution of the artist’s printmaking over three decades, from the minimalistic geometric “Black Series 1” (1967) to the visually cacophonous “Near East Monoprints” (1999-2001). Organized to celebrate the publication of the revised and updated catalogue raisonné of Stella’s prints, the exhibit is a testament to the artist’s inexhaustible curiosity, technical daring and creative exploration. Richard H. Axsom, senior curator at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin, is both the author of the catalogue, “Frank Stella Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné,” and the curator of the retrospective. The 100 editioned prints on display are generously on loan from the … [Read more...] about FRANK STELLA AT ADDISON