Making Artwork More Accessible at Smith by John Paul Stapleton Northampton, Mass. - From the new Whitney Museum of American Art building in New York City to our semi-local Peabody Essex Museum expansion project, renovations seemed to be the hot decision for 2015. The Smith College Museum of Art joined this league with their four-year renovation project that was of officially completed this past fall. Margi Caplan, the museum’s membership and marketing director, showed me around the museum to point out what has changed in their two-phase project. In addition to updated lighting and the removal of the main exhibition gallery’s staircase, the whole observer experience has changed. “We thought about museum methodology and pedagogy,” Caplan said. “The museum’s collection works well, but wasn’t up to date. As a teaching museum, what we wanted to do was make the work … [Read more...] about New And Improved at Smith College Museum of Art
Issue Articles
Put Me In, Coach
HIGH-FLYING MURALS AT NEW ART CENTER by James Foritano Newton, Mass. - January and February are ordinarily months of cabin fever, when walls close in — unless, of course, you’re the kind of athlete who sees sport in snow and ice. For enthusiasts of the “great indoors,” as more and more I count myself, there are always walls begging to be inscribed, emblazoned with intuitions of the heart and soul. Skeptical? Suffering under the illusion that art is for artists and walls are no place to be leaving the untutored effusions of an amateur? Relax. You have The New Art Center in Newton’s Holzwasser Gallery — a modest space of about 300 square feet with walls that soar to an 18-foot- high ceiling — and the sanction of a young program that encourages anyone and everyone with a yen to team up with like-minded participants and, under expert but gentle coaching, make your … [Read more...] about Put Me In, Coach
Tea For Two
LAU AND LEDBETTER AT KNIZNICK by James Foritano Waltham, Mass. - As a critic, I have no trouble recom- mending the exhibit currently at the Kniznick Gallery in Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center. The art, craft and vision, as well as the curatorial presentation, are all top-notch. It’s only on the personal level, which is a big “only,” that I can’t guarantee the integrity of either the pitch, the come-on or the content which, though all perfectly innocent-looking, are only partially so — on purpose, I suspect. Take Heidi Lau’s ceramic sculptures. They pitch themselves as objects we can walk around, take in and, most impor- tantly, assign a place vis-à-vis ourselves – as in “here” and “there.” But try as I might, I could never resist the feeling that I’d missed something a closer look would have revealed — and by leaning in, I’d lose my … [Read more...] about Tea For Two
January/February 2016 issue
Article Excerpts: Welcome | Celebration of the Pencil | Tea for Two | The Clock Is Ticking | Put Me In, Coach | New and Improved at Smith College Museum of Art | Jay Schadler in New Hampshire | ALT CLAY at Pine Manor | A Medium For Social Change | Feeling Blue in Vermont | Six Days That Changed The World | Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 | Miami's Art Fair Week | A New Generation at CAA | BLAUWW: CELEBRATING BLUE | Hello, World! | Pedagogy and Place at Yale | A POST-MODERN DREAMSCAPE IN NEW CANAAN, CONN. | Thinking Small and Living Large - Tiny Houses | Grants and Residencies: ARTISTS GO FOR IT | Capsule Previews … [Read more...] about January/February 2016 issue
THINKING SMALL AND LIVING LARGE
TINY HOUSES AT FULLER CRAFT by Brian Goslow Brockton, Mass. - For most of his life, Derek “Deek” Diedricksen has had an affinity for small structures. When he was 9 or 10, his father, at the time a high school woodworking teacher, gave him a copy of “Tiny Tiny Houses” by Lester Walker, an architect from Woodstock, New York. The 1987 book has become a guiding light not only for his life, but thousands of others around the world who have used it as inspiration for creating their own special miniature living spaces. More recently, they’ve become attractions at galleries and museums, including the Empty Spaces Project in Putnam, Conn., and this February, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Mass. “The art is shelter, but also art that you can walk into that’s around you, which is pretty darn cool, I think,” Diedricksen said. “People always have this affinity for being in these … [Read more...] about THINKING SMALL AND LIVING LARGE
JAY SCHADLER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY by Greg Morell Portsmouth, New Hampshire - Feasting and drinking are two of my favorite pastimes, but they are not usually the subjects of contemporary artists. Jay Schadler, however, is not your usual artistic practitioner. A photo-illustrator in a unique niche, Schadler, a Michigan native, first earned a law degree at Syracuse University, but quickly left the law behind and began his adventure as a world-traveling special correspondent for ABC News with a gift for storytelling. He hitchhiked across America, telling the story of the Everyman for his “Looking for America” series. Schadler’s 32-year career as a globetrotting television journalist sent him off to remote locations in Africa, India and Uzbekistan, but his most harrowing assignment was chasing the Ebola Virus in the jungle canopy of Gabon. In his eclectic studio/gallery in … [Read more...] about JAY SCHADLER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE