Welcome to our summer 2025 issue, In reviewing the images of artworks our writers submitted to accompany their stories, I realized that this issue would be, unintentionally, abstract and laid back, cool and mostly non-confrontational, something I think most, if not all of us, need at this time. We’re all looking for inspiration; look no further than our opening “Cornered” feature spotlighting 99-year-old Carmen Cicero, who talked with Lee Roscoe about his lengthy career and his current shows at the ...

Carmen Cicero has made art since he was a child and at 99 is still doing so. The Berta Walker Gallery is currently featuring some of his prolific watercolors in “Tales of Intrigue,” an exhibition running through July 20, which accompanies his book: “Carmen Cicero, Watercolors and Drawings, Tales of Danger, Intrigue and Humor.” (The book, by David Ebony, and “The Art of Carmen Cicero,” will be available at the Provincetown gallery.) Walker recently talked of rediscovering Cicero, promoting him ...

The New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, Massachusetts has been transformed into a space where botanical beauty meets historical majesty. “Chinese Empresses,” the culminating exhibition of Xiang Li's extraordinary 12-year artistic journey, brings together over 200 hand-painted portraits of Chinese imperial women, each a testament to grace, power and cultural memory. This exhibition, on view through August 24, marks the first time the collection is shown after years of partial showings at the Museum of Fine Arts, ...

When the British illustrator Ralph Steadman came to prominence in the early 1970s, the underground press was flourishing. The wild west of ad hoc leaflets and magazines — filled with outrageous cartoons, stoned musings by hippies, yippies and zippies, and the seeds of the burgeoning self-help movement — connected the counterculture in a way comparable only to the later internet forums of the 1990s and 2000s, before the omnipresence of social media leveled both. These periodical’s illicitness and mind-expanding promises ...

In a period in which America’s political, social and environmental certainties are being steadily eroded and dismantled, cutting edge art is needed more than ever to lead us to explore our feelings and hone our critical skills. Three solo exhibitions at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) by painter Nicole Wittenberg, sculptor Elizabeth Atterbury and installation artist Carlie Trosclair demand that the art audience steadfastly question appearances and explore our inner experience. Only with our brains fully engaged can ...

Whimsical and playful, surreal and profound, “Fragments of Memory” at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown firmly places Armenian American artist Varujan Boghosian in the company of influential assemblage artists like Joseph Cornell, Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. Art lovers who appreciate oddities, hidden stories in nooks and crannies, and finding something new every time they take a second look, will delight in digging deep into the incredible portfolio of Boghosian. Raised in Connecticut by ...

Imagine how challenging and rewarding it must have been for the Worcester Art Museum’s (WAM) Assistant Curator of European Art, Delaney Keenan, to explore the museum’s acquisition records to search for data on “textiles, tapestries or weavings” — and then to locate these tapestries in storage or vaults — many that had not been seen for decades. The result of Keenan and staff’s year’s long exploration and conservation is “From the Vault: Collecting Tapestries at the Worcester Art Museum,” a ...

“But is it interesting?” — Gertrude Stein “Marny” Solomon never ceased to find Peter Lipsitt’s sculptures, of whatever mode or material, interesting. Frequenting his solo exhibitions at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, she would croon, “Oh, Peter, I lo-o-o-ve it!” and once again demand a piece for her living room or buffet. She and her husband Arthur K. Solomon, the distinguished head of Biophysics at Harvard Medical School, continued to purchase Lipsitt’s sculptures for two decades, even after cutting back on ...

“Sean Landers: Lost at Sea” exhibition at the Newport Art Museum opens with Landers’ oil painting “Lighthouse Keepers in Shadows” mounted at the entrance to a narrow corridor. Like a preamble for what is to come, this virtually black-and-white painting sets the tone for the entire exhibition. Two men — presumably the keepers of the lighthouse — are so dark, they seem silhouettes against the lighthouse and wintery skies behind them. They face out towards us in the brooding, ominous ...

Nestled along Connecticut's scenic Gold Coast lies the charming town of Fairfield, home to a wealth of attractions, including the picturesque Fairfield University. Perched atop a hill on the campus is Bellarmine Hall, a stately 44-room mansion designed in the elegant style of an English manor house. Within its lower level, the Fairfield University Art Museum is currently showcasing “Famous and Family: Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann,” on view now through July 26. Trude Fleischmann, an Austrian-born pioneer of ...

Opening on July 17 and running through August 16 at the Copley Society of Art on Boston’s Newbury Street, “A Shared Space: One Studio, Two Views” features the varied paintings of Margaret Sheldon and Meghan Weeks. Sheldon and Weeks are studio mates — Sheldon spending lots of time painting “furiously” with her coffee, hot in the colder months and iced when it's cold — a classic New England experience, and Weeks, a plein air painter, balancing her studio time with ...

Painter Joe Diggs is having two shows this summer: “Evolving Circles,” a first-time solo exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) and one which complements it, “Shaping Change,” at Berta Walker Gallery. He said that the show at PAAM is a retrospective of work created between 2016 and 2025. “There are circles in all my pieces. In college and grad school, I was always trying to figure out how to put a circle inside a square.” And that ...

The art in “Recycled: Trash and Treasure: Rediscovered” juried exhibition at the Menino Arts Center in the Hyde Park section of Boston approaches the reuse of disposable materials from an aesthetic — and occasionally political — point of view. The concept of art made from trash is not a new one. But since our society continues to produce waste on a prodigious scale, it is an idea that warrants continual revisiting. In the words of the jurors: “Trash becomes treasure, ...

There’s no one way to paint a New England summer. For some people, summertime is a cold drink on a Cape Cod beach; for others it's a walk through a forested trail teeming with life, and for others still, it's ducking into an air-conditioned building to beat the city heat. At the Savage Godfrey Gallery in Norwell, Massachusetts (located on the South Shore between Boston and Plymouth), mother-daughter team Sunne Savage and Christina Godfrey bring together three painters for their ...

Over the course of a year, artist Nancy Gruskin selected works by 11 others with studio visits as far afield as New York City and London, United Kingdom for “Object Lessons,” an exhibition on view through August 10 at the Concord Center for the Visual Arts. In her beautifully designed and written catalog, Gruskin wonders, “why are vessels in particular the objects of affection for so many artists?” In the much-admired minimalist paintings of Giorgio Morandi, vessels are faithful servants, ...

Exactly one year ago, Artscope Magazine ran a story by Ami Bennitt of #ARTSTAYSHERE about the upcoming displacement of scores of artists inhabiting the spaces of the Cottage Street Studios, a converted mill building that had acted as Art Central in Easthampton, Massachusetts for 45 years. As is happening in many cities, the rents for studio space more than tripled, and most artists were unable to maintain their studios, some having occupied them for decades. Andrea Zax is one of ...

When you hear the term “craft fair,” do monkeys made from socks, syrupy-sweet decoupage plaques with shih tzu puppies and tacky jewelry come to mind? OK. I get that. But I’m going to suggest it’s time for a paradigm shift here. Every summer in August, for 10 days, artisans and artists who comprise the League of NH Craftsmen, gather to display their wares, conduct interactive demonstrations and charm their large fan base. The event, held at Mount Sunapee Resort, is ...

Angell Street Galleries in Providence, Rhode Island is a concept driven exhibition venue recently opened as an incubator-stylepresentation space. A quirk of its existence is that it was formerly a dentist’s office, now re-contextualized into a flowing array of micro-galleries. There is a casual vibe to the transformation, a feeling of open plan. Painter Marjorie Hellman, whose works are included in its “Summer Exhibition,” mentioned this had been her periodontist’s office. The complete list of artists showing in the show ...

Art Basel 2025, held in its original hometown, once again transcended the backdrop of global uncertainty, wars, environmental crises and economic turmoil to offer an exhilarating and necessary respite. From June 19 through 22, with an exclusive VIP preview commencing on June 16, this cornerstone of the contemporary art world provided a vibrant sanctuary where visitors could deeply absorb and reflect upon the world around them, past and future. Despite the sheer magnitude, which could easily lead to "art exhaustion" ...

“Smiling Out Loud,” paintings by DaNice D. Marshall “depicting ordinary life with smiles of joy,” opens July 1 at the Hopkinton Center for the Arts, 98 Hayden Rowe St., Hopkinton, Massachusetts. “It is a familiar thread that reminds us that we’re more alike than we are different,” with the viewer invited, quietly, to experience “a moment without words and to feel lighter” as if you were walking into a room full of strangers, “who look at you and smile and ...