As 2021 comes to a close, we all take a collective sigh while still not sure what the future holds. While not containing some of the “look back” features weekly and monthly publications utilize to capsulize a year, I think you’ll find this issue pulls together a collection of reviews and previews for exhibitions whose artists have captured their personal experiences since the first shutdown of March 2020 in their artwork, museums and galleries catching up on shows that had ...

In the early days of the pandemic, nearly 18 months ago, I asked artist friends if they were working through the pandemic, perhaps with more time and less resources, or whether they were experiencing a shift in daily ritual and creativity. Most said they were planning on working, but as the days of isolation and lockdown and diminished social contact wore on, I heard a shift in tone. One artist said, “I’ve stopped. I want to see where this is ...

“Maine... the way life should be.” The tourist tagline you’re greeted with as you enter this much sought-after vacation state is classic, timeless marketing. Poignant. Iconic. Like the marketing strategy tagline, the new show at Bates Museum of Art, “An Adventurous Spirit: The Jane Costello Wellehan Collection,” is also poignant, iconic — and by Maine artists exclusively. Many were from Maine. Many moved away from Maine and returned. Many chose Maine later in life, desiring a laidback, casual lifestyle. And ...

The Hood Museum at Dartmouth College is home to an innovative program allowing student curators to create an exhibition from concept to realization, producing all aspects of their self-defined project including writing wall text and a brochure, choosing wall colors, frames and object placement, and giving a public talk. With the support of faculty and experienced curators, once a theme has been specified, students have access to the vast collection held by the Hood, with wide-reaching opportunities to choose works ...

Tamar Orell Petler turned — as many of us often do — to nature for solace during Covid, especially when her beloved father, Izack Alkalay, passed at age 102 from the virus in November 2020 in Israel, just before a vaccine was available. She kept taking photographs and found that after over a year, her work could constitute her very first solo exhibit at Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, where Petler is the graphic designer and staff photographer. The photos ...

Just at the tipping point of the 19th into the 20th century, Paul Gauguin gave us an operator’s manual for humankind in a painting he brought back to Paris from Tahiti: “Where are we going? What are we? Where do we come from?” He had trouble unloading his painting, for keeps — too many questions — until Boston’s own Museum of Fine Arts bought it in the 1930s, where it’s now a staple of modern art. The manual, though reluctantly ...

The Addison Gallery of American Art on Phillips Academy’s Andover, Massachusetts campus is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in the world. Impressively, its collection includes nearly 22,000 objects that span a timeline that begins in the early 18th century and ends today. As if that weren’t enough, admission to the Addison is notoriously free. My visit felt as expansive as its collection; meandering through the space felt less like a gallery visit than a trip back in ...

Pointed engagement of social commentary, coupled with experimentalism with the presentation of photography as a medium are both hallmarks that define the artwork of photographer and installation artist Annu Palakunnathu Matthew. Through January 9, 2022 at Newport Art Museum, audiences can experience Matthew’s mid-career retrospective, “ReVision,” curated by Dr. Francine Weiss. The show is installed in four museum galleries that are located in the John N.A. Griswold House. The galleries relate a range in approach by the artist, from intimate ...

“Sisters of the Brush and Palette: Women Artists of the Guild” displays the art by all the women members of the Guild of Boston Artists, founded in 1914. The 15 artists display art that is serene, beautiful and deliciously painted and sculpted. In our current Covid-induced state of anxiety, social distrust and racial turmoil, their art is a welcome respite. Hopefully, there will always be a place for serenity, beauty and peace in our lives. Gertrude Fiske and Lilian Westcott ...

It’s difficult to make out what you’re looking at. At first, it seems vaguely like an upside-down human head. But what would serve as a skull is a black vessel imprinted with flowers and leaves, and a raven ponytail grows out a would-be neck. Then there are the tan and lace-like patches creating a checkered patchwork across what would be a face, and the cream-colored nodules and protuberances growing nearly everywhere — some of which resemble reproductive organs. Meanwhile, a ...

Printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett, who died in 2012, still feels quite alive through her life’s work. I visited the Cantor Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross having intentionally avoided reviewing the press material sent for its “The Art of Elizabeth Catlett from the Collection of Samella Lewis” so that I would react to the art without preconception. That changed in hurry as I realized that much of her work had been a subliminal part of my life, ...

The Bridgeport, Connecticut creative community is formidable. After adapting the annual Bridgeport Art Trail to an online event in 2020, they are planning a robust schedule of events for this November. The 2021 BAT theme is “Discovery and Reinvention.” Here’s a sample of the rich and unusual activities taking place from November 11 through 14. Bridgeport artists will open their studios to the public on Saturday and Sunday, November 13 and 14 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sites include Read’s ArtSpace, ...

One year after its original opening date, on September 4, 2021, the 34th São Paulo Biennial finally opened its doors to the public. The title, “Though it’s Dark, Still, I Sing,” inspired by a verse published in 1965 by Amazonian poet Thiago de Mello, brings a message of tenacity, hope and resilience to enlighten the hardship that has been terrorizing humankind by so many contemporary happenings and for some, for more than 500 years. A positive perspective seen through art ...

The art fair game is changing. It’s fast approaching the game of slip and slide, ad schedules change along with rules for admittance due to the Covid-19 pandemic, making attendance by galleries, artists and the art market public a game of chance. Following Art Basel and satellite fairs in Switzerland in September, that had been rescheduled from June 2021 with the June 2020 fair cancelled, Art Basel Miami Beach 2021, open privately and by invitation only from November 30 through ...

As reports grew on the large number of freighter crates sitting off the coast of California and with them, the warning that consumers best start their Christmas and holiday shopping early this year, postings of a social media meme also grew: “The work of local artists is not sitting on cargo ships.” It’s a message the art world, both regionally and nationally have been trying to share for years. The end of the calendar year is traditionally filled with holiday ...