As we were putting the final touches on this issue, our 80th, our publisher, Kaveh Mojtabai, told me, “The fashion work on our cover harkens back to an era of family, honor and Sufi creed (compassion, love, patience and peace with all religions and people) to keep unity within tribes and clans for the betterment of future generations. It reminds me of one the most popular shows in the world on Netflix, Diriliş — or ‘Resurrection’ in Turkish, taking place ...

Born in Puerto Rico, Nayda Aurora Cuevas moved to the United States with her family at the age of 10, a point in her life, she writes on her website, that “evoked a new sense of self-exploration and need to establish connections with people.” Her figurative paintings — “a visual language to better articulate my observations and interpretations of my Latin@ American Experience” — invite viewers to do the same. Cuevas’ work has been shown throughout the East Coast; last ...

Being a woman by society’s standards means presenting a face of beauty to the world, one brushed with makeup and a smile. It means keeping up with fashion, spraying perfume to smell like sweetness, staying slim, keeping her inside processes discrete, being a wife, caring for kids, cooking and cleaning, all while holding down a job to support the family. But being a woman carries much more than this. Being a woman truly means strength, having confidence in her own ...

Photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews brings the environmental and cultural facets of the five countries bordering the Caspian Sea to viewers in the recently-opened exhibition, “Caspian: The Elements.” In October 2018, Mathews published a book under the same title with 125 of her photographs. Now, 30 of those photographs are being displayed at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology in a captivating exhibition. Mathews spent five years traveling through Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, capturing the lives of their ...

There are events in human history which irrevocably alter the course of a life, a people and our global family. We have all seen images of the aftermath of cataclysmic natural disasters, but when catastrophe is deliberately imposed by another, there is no measurement for its human toll. Yet among the untold tragedies inflicted on the innocent, there are stories of individuals who have been able to transcend, and even transform these cruelties into expressions of empathic witness and universal ...

“Obama: An Intimate Portrait” is a hand-picked collection of 50 photos taken by Dartmouth native and former White House photographer Pete Souza. The exhibit is presented at the New Bedford Art Museum in conjunction with the New Bedford Historical Society. The New York Times captured my first impression of Pete Souza — it was spot on! “Life as a headliner makes him uneasy. For decades, Mr. Souza’s life has been about observation.” I met Mr. Souza during a private preview ...

In 1915, the infant Berj Kailian escaped the Armenian Genocide in World War I while lashed to her mother’s back. Five years after Kailian’s death, the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown presents the exhibition, “In the Shade of Branches,” an occasion for looking at the past through the lens of an artist committed to life moving forward. During the Turkish massacre and deportation of over a million Armenians, Berj Kailian’s mother miraculously survived her husband’s murder and the loss ...

Whether he is painting, teaching, curating or creating a video, multimedia artist Humberto Ramirez is likely to be thinking about social issues and the power of art in shaping values and perceptions. In his exhibit at the ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret, Vermont, on view from May 17 through June 1, Ramirez’s abstract paintings allude to botanical gardens that use the conventions of abstraction but go further, delving into the deeply rooted experience of the body and the ...

The Yale University Art Gallery is showcasing its magnificent Mabel Brady Garvan Glass Collection in a student-curated exhibition that feels fresh and contemporary. The accompanying catalogue goes a long way to add flesh to the stories behind these objects, beginning with the history of Francis P. Garvan and his evolution as a major 20th century collector. The son of prosperous Irish immigrants, Garvan was born and reared in East Hartford and educated at Yale College. He went on to earn ...

When I was in high school in New York City in the ‘70s, it was de rigueur for girls to clothe themselves from local thrift shops. It was not unusual to see your friends in Lanvin or Schiaparelli working a Bunsen burner in bio class. That was before Upper East Side ladies donated to the Met, and before the Costume Institute was established and before there was a sizable tax benefit to giving away your vintage Valentino. As a societal ...

Want the perfect summer New England day trip? This is it! An enchanted drive up the coast, interspersed with serendipitous food spots along the way — ultimately culminating at Ogunquit Museum of American Art, a little jewel of an art gallery. Or, if you don’t want to end your day there, walk on up to Perkins Cove to dine — check out Barnacle Billy’s or M.C. Perkins Cove for food, Todd Bonita’s Gallery for more f ine art, Swamp John’s ...

As I walked to work last Election Day, I passed a crew power-washing a mural off the side of a building. Concentrated blasts of water hit the wall, dislodging chips of paint that swirled in rivulets towards the gutter. I frantically snapped pictures with my phone of the disappearing images from Daniel Galvez’s “Crossroads” mural, which had adorned the side of Central Square Library in Cambridge for over three decades. In creating it, Galvez had enlisted the help of local ...

For the reopening at its new renovated location in the historic Jonathan Maynard Building, now part of Framingham State University, the Danforth Art Museum’s curator Jessica Roscio has organized a major permanent installation of the work and studio of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877–1968), a groundbreaking African-American sculptor, and three other temporary exhibitions: “Landed: Selections from the Permanent Collection;” “Armchair Travel;” and “Lois Tarlow: Material Vocabulary.” The reopening also features a selection of four recent acquisitions by Barbara Swan (1922–2003), ...

The passion of a collector was evident the day Elizabeth Van Gelder and I met at the de Menil Gallery where 250 objects from her extensive collection are on display at the Groton School. Van Gelder’s collection of tribal artifacts and textiles, her “gathering of beauty,” began in 1989 with her travels while on sabbatical from her position as art teacher there. “I started collecting because I’m an artist and I’m a traveler,” she explained. “What excites me is going ...

Art that investigates human mourning and grief drives our most basic creative instincts. Buried in our DNA, the tears shed over death can even be seen evolutionarily in mammals and birds. Humans build tumuli, erect memorial statues, plant trees, make death masks, wear black and even throw themselves on funeral pyres. Sheila Gallagher’s art invents new materials and icons to help us grieve over death due to starvation, disease, warfare gassing and guns. Not surprisingly, her choice of media tends ...

Suzanne M. Packer showed her first artwork at the San Francisco Museum of Art when she was five years old. Some of her earliest memories are of spending her Saturdays sitting at the dining table painting watercolors and drawing with her dad, A.S. Packer, noted illustrator for Parade magazine, as her mother, teacher and school principal, encouraged her. She grew up in a suburb near Manhattan and was taken to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MOMA and the Frick ...

They have different backgrounds, influences, subject matter and mediums, but they are united in supportiveness and mutual respect as the “Twenty-One in Truro.” The group started in 1999 when two women thought the Corn Hill cottages in Truro, Cape Cod, would make a great artists’ retreat. Within about a week, 21 women, all the place had room for, had signed on. The venue for their annual week-long retreat at the end of September into October changed years back, from the ...

Three world-class artists of color in residence at Zion Union Heritage Museum in Cape Cod — Joseph Diggs, Carl Lopes and Robin J. Miller — share a pride in their African-American heritage which informs their art, but their styles and techniques differ widely. All practiced art full-time after other careers. Miller was an award-winning art teacher at P.S. 108 in the Bronx. Lopes was the beloved director of visual arts at Barnstable High School. Diggs was a flight attendant, which ...

Frida Kahlo was a contemporary artist, even by today’s standards. Her multidisciplinary art practice was a predecessor to today’s public relations creation of celebrity. Kahlo introduced feminism to a field sorely unequal in its treatment of women artists, and let the world know that a physical disability and pain could propel art, not limit it. Her art stood for feminism, recognition of the ability of the disabled, her politics and ethnic and cultural heritage, making her an example and heroine ...

Ever since Norman Rockwell’s portrayals of American life graced the covers of The Saturday Evening Post, the beloved illustrator has been among the most recognized artists reflecting American art and culture. An astute visual storyteller and masterful painter, he had a distinct and personal message to share. That message conveyed the spirit of a nation whether recalling childhood pranks, young love, family rituals or facing hardships. Many of his works revealed his own life, his family, friends and neighbors and ...

Bromer Booksellers and Gallery is a hidden wonder tucked away on the second floor of an otherwise-unremarkable Boylston Street building. It is a bookstore and gallery specializing in rare, antique and miniature books and prints. The gallery part opened up just last year, and the blend of books and art creates an exciting milieu of creativity. Bromer “strives to complement the art of the book with the book as art.” And their upcoming show, “Barry Moser: The Storied Artist,” certainly ...

Spring has brought a visually compelling exhibit to ArtSpace Maynard. “Mark of Emotion,” curated by Sallie Strand, presents the stylistically diverse paintings of three accomplished abstract artists, Joanne Holtje, Jane Cohen and Strand. Having met several years ago in an abstract painting class, Holtje, Cohen and Strand have maintained a professional relationship based on their common vision of abstraction, each whom are engaged in a distinct approach. In her curator’s statement, Strand has likened the artists’ work to Abstract Expressionism ...

Featuring the work of ceramic artists Phoebe Snow, Michelle Grey, Kim Gardner, Abby Nohal and Faith Connor and glass artists Meredith Collins, Lindsy Marshall, Molly Roderick, Kristen Momoko Schafer and Angela McHale, “Fired/Molten,” an exhibition featuring the current group of artists-in-residence at the Worcester Center for Crafts, is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of starting or adding to an existing collection of fine handmade work. “Some of the attendees for the A-I-R show are astute and ...

Hera Gallery in Wakefield, Rhode Island is a cooperative gallery founded in 1974 as an innovative outpost of feminist art activism. In a 1983 New York Times article, “When Artists Start Their Own Galleries,” Lawrence Alloway wrote that Hera was one of just a handful of galleries run by women for women nationally. The article critically acknowledged Hera alongside A.I.R. Gallery and SOHO20 in New York City, ARC and Artemisia Galleries in Chicago and the Womanhouse installation in Los Angeles. ...

Nestled on the south coast of Massachusetts is New Bedford, named one of the most creative cities in not just one, but in several surveys and publications starting in 2011, when, Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class,” ranked the city as the “seventh most artistic city in America in proportion to its population, alongside the likes of San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.” Since then, it was also ranked ninth on Matador Network’s list of ...

It is inspiring when our world-class universities invite artists to have a seat at the table. On Monday, April 8, 2019, MIT organized a panel discussion centering on the artist Julie Mehretu and her work as part of its ongoing lecture series at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. Nasser Rabbat, a renowned architectural historian and director of the AKPIA, welcomed the audience. The series focuses on art and the artist’s ability to respond to the violent conflicts that ...