Article Excerpts
Welcome: From Brian Goslow: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
One of the things we all miss the most due to the pandemic is our one-on-one meetings at gallery and museum openings, whether with old friends or someone whose work screams out getting to know this person better. With everyone missing that regular communication, it seemed fitting, as the months add up, to include a series of “visits” to find out how people, regions and the business of art was getting on. Ron Fortier talked with three South Coast artists: ...CORNERED: CLAUDIA FIKS
Claudia Fiks has spent over two decades working in the arts and culture non-profit sector, acquiring invaluable entrepreneurial, management, fundraising and partnership development expertise that she’s put to good use as the founder of Arts Administration Association New England (AAANE). During the pandemic, the organization has given arts administrators the chance to network and share ideas on how to navigate the landscape of a region where each state has different guidelines and benchmarks to reopen– and close – in a ...SOME DAY IS NOW IN NEW BRITAIN: MODERN WOMEN ARTISTS HONOR SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
“Some Day is Now: Women, Art and Social Change,” which opens on October 1 at the New Britain Museum of American Art, is an exhibit that is uplifting visually and resplendent in slogans. The show contains works by 21 women artists and ephemera from the Women’s Suffrage movement. The show opens with print ephemera from the Women’s Suffrage movement borrowed from the Harvard Art Museums, the Smithsonian and Connecticut Historical Society. It then unfolds into a contemporary exhibition, featuring women ...UNFINISHED WORK: GORDON D. CHASE IS FAR FROM RETIRED
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many galleries are keeping artists’ work in the forefront by converting exhibitions to a virtual format. Not viewing Gordon D. Chase’s exhibition of charcoal drawings, “High Contrast,” at the Lamont Gallery, in person was a disappointment, but it was amply compensated for with an engaging conversation with the artist. Chase, a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy (class of 1966), recently retired after 40 years as an art teacher and administrator. The text and artist’s statement on Chase’s website set ...THE TINIEST UNIVERSE OF ALL: STAY HOME/STAY SAFE BREAKS THE QUARANTINE
The most captivating thing about the arts scene these days is that in all its many ways it centers on that very root word, captive — and its opposite, free. Art, because it is art, does not exist inside boundaries. For artists, there will always be the impulse to create, the need to find a voice and speak, the need to share a vision, the need to engage within a social network. When museums and galleries and coffee houses were ...A VERY DIFFERENT SEASON: PTOWN GALLERY STROLL FEELS LIKE HOME
Going live on May 29 as the traditional summer season would have normally begun, the Ptown Gallery Stroll website has provided a weekly rundown of exhibitions and artwork in town, serving as a helpful guide for those who’ve made the trip to Provincetown as well as those who’ve chosen to remain home this time around, keeping galleries and artists in the eyes of potential buyers. With a goal to “foster a sense of community and mutual support among gallery owners, ...REPLENISHED ENERGY: GUILD OF BOSTON SHOWS ITS RESILIENCE
During the downtime forced by COVID-19, the Guild of Boston Artists, longtime mainstay of Newbury Street, renovated its entire gallery space with new furniture, carpets and LED lighting – features that have always allowed collectors and buyers the opportunity to see what an artist’s work would look like in their own home or office. On the eve of the opening of its 2020 New England Regional Juried exhibition that opened on August 29 and continues through September 26, Artscope Magazine’s ...STORIES OF MAINE: TIMELY, RICH AND MEANINGFUL
How does one curate a show that marks 200 years of statehood? One that honors place, people and history most authentically as possible? Assistant Curator of American Art Diana Greenwold and her collaborators from the Portland Museum of Art and the Maine Humanities Council (MHC) might have an answer. In pushing against the trap of a master narrative, “Stories of Maine: An Incomplete History” is inclusive in scope and content, breaking the barriers of traditional museum exhibitions in more ways ...CHANGING LABELS: FOR ROSSOW, ART IS AVENUE TO AWARENESS
As if the pandemic wasn’t enough, the surrealism of what it has both revealed and exposed about this American life has everyone, artists especially, looking at their day-to-day activities a bit differently. Roy St. Christopher Rossow is a Jamaican-born artist. He was placed into foster care by his mother at an early age because he contracted poliomyelitis as a child due to the lack of preventive intervention during the last polio outbreak on the island. Rossow was sent to, and ...CAPTURING HISTORY: REMICK PAINTINGS ILLUMINATE HEALTHCARE HEROES
Americans are forgetful people, or so it would seem. And yet, what we think we are, and what we remember, is more often than not, more myth than fact. Stephen Remick is a painter. He is a successful painter. How do we, as painters, generally define success? Well, based on conversations with other painters, they sometimes define their success as artists based on how many pieces they’ve sold. So, based on that, we can unequivocally say that Stephen “Steve” Remick ...OVERCOMING ADVERSITY: DAVID BAGGARLY FOLLOWS THE LIGHT
Duke Ellington said that “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” And though he refused to play to segregated audiences, he also declined to participate in Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963. Ellington’s relationship with the civil rights movement was complicated. He preferred to demonstrate his activism by doing benefit concerts. And so, it is, with many artists in times of crisis and unrest who either join with others in the movement of ...MUSEUMS REINVENTED: A MANIFESTO: OUTSIDE EXHIBITS OFFER NEW WAY OF SEEING ART
Only five to seven percent of museums worldwide were open as of April 29, 2020, according to the International Council of Museums. On International Museum Day, May 18, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the International Council of Museums warned that 13 percent of museums worldwide would permanently close, after closing temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic. In mid-July, the American Alliance of Museums predicted that one in three, or approximately 12,000 museums, may permanently close in ...CAPSULE PREVIEWS: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
A few days prior to us going to press with this issue of Artscope Magazine, the region received the long-awaited news that galleries that had been closed since a mid-April water break flooded their exhibition spaces at 460 Harrison Ave., Boston, would finally be reopening. Could there be a more appropriate exhibition title than “Light from Above: Emerging Out of Isolation,” which will be on view from September 4 through October 31 at Galatea Fine Art? “Returning to the gallery ...