Metaboston

Can the Gardner Museum Overcome the Touch of Evil?

Abby Goodnough looks at how the Isabella Gardner Museum is trying to overcome the legacy of Gardner's restrictive will and the devastating unsolved theft.

"[T]he museum has labored in recent years to shed its fusty image and move past the theft that has, for better or worse, given it a reputation of being “touched with evil,” as Douglass Shand-Tucci, who wrote a biography of Gardner, once put it. Its latest goal, a 65,000-square-foot new building designed by Renzo Piano to sit behind Gardner’s century-old mansion, is the boldest yet.

***

Now, in a victory the Gardner had been awaiting for months, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on March 4 that the museum can depart from the strict parameters of Gardner’s prickly will. It called the expansion a “reasonable deviation” from the will because it is in the public interest to protect the building from overuse.

According to the will if the arrangement of any of the museum’s holdings changes, the entire collection, the building and the land beneath it must be turned over to Harvard.

Goodnough's article presents a museum that seems to labor under the legacy of a Jamesian secret history.  Although the thefts are a subject of recurring interest they seem to have infused the museum with melancholy in this presentation. 

It does seem too bad that very particular and eccentric museums like this have to be improved with the worst example being the plan to move the Barnes Collection.  That said, the Gardner's plans to expand and bring in new blood come across as a form of exorcism here.

Willoughby and Baltic Artist-in-Residence

Hacker/artist space Willoughby and Baltic is now offering an Artist-in-Residence Program to artists interested in mixing technology and art.

In order to support the creative process, Willoughby and Baltic offers a 6 month residency for two emerging artists. Each artist is granted a free, non-living shared studio space and a small material stipend. The studio is complete with free wi-fi and access to electronic assembly tools and modelmaking equipment, a machine shop, and a woodshop. The residency will commence on May 1st and end on October 31st, 2009.The deadline for submitting an application to the Artist-in-Residence program is March 31st, 2009.

One-Minute Films Revived at AXIOM

 AXIOM Center for New and Experimental Media will be reshowing the 60-second films from the 1 Minute Film Festival on Feb. 19 at 7.30pm.

AXIOM is excited to present an hour's worth of 48 film selections from LUMEN ECLIPSE's 1-Minute Film Festival. The first annual 1-Minute Film Festival exhibited all varieties of 60 second films with the democratic proviso: none shall exceed one minute!

"If big films are the cathedrals of today, we sought artist's take on what a tiny and beautiful shrine might look like."

Originally screened outdoors in Harvard Square in the fall of 2008, this selection has also been included in the traveling motion design event MGfest.

LUMEN ECLIPSE presents contemporary motion art in public spaces. Using outdoor video displays, social venues and the web, Lumen Eclipse initiates dynamic interactions between artists, sites and audiences. We enrich public space and everyday experience with free and innovative motion art.

Location: The ground floor level of the Green Street Subway ("T") station on the Orange line, at the corner of Amory and Green Streets in Jamaica Plain, MA

(Images from a few of the films by AXIOM : [Top] Forestry Masato Hayafune, Air Plugs Elena Wen [Bottom] Dandelions Yves Geleyn, Crossing Times Square Sara Blaylock)

Time Travel, Gondry, & MIT

Michel Gondry, director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and former MIT artist-in-residence, is working on the script for a time-travel movie set at MIT.

Portsmouth, Rhode Island will soon be one of the best places to see the elaborate wire sculptures of Richard Lippold.

In the last year some of Lippold’s most complicated constructions have undergone nimble-fingered repairs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.Artisans at Newmans Ltd., a metal-restoration outfit in Newport, R.I., and at the Richard Lippold Foundation, a nonprofit or ganization in Locust Valley, N.Y., have been clambering around scaffolding to untangle, dismantle, polish and restring sculptures on miles of wire.

Lippold was an engineering genius, but we’ve been dealing with a piece that had reached the threshold of catastrophe,” said Howard Newman, of the Newport company. Working with a budget of $475,000, his staff is now rehanging a Lippold work called “Trinity”: about 215 aluminum bars on four miles of gold wires, spanning from floor to ceiling at a 1960s Benedictine chapel in Portsmouth, R.I.

“People’s mouths fall open when they see it going back up, like they’re watching a spider spin a web of blazing gold,” Mr. Newman said. “The more that goes up, the more exquisite it gets.”

Newmans Ltd. brought in a yacht-restoration company to sandblast corrosion off the aluminum sections and has wholly replaced the original filaments, which were cracking. The deterioration was partly because of miscalculations by the original construction team, led by the modernist architect Pietro Belluschi, said Michael J. DeMatteo, a senior associate at Newport Collaborative Architects, which is overseeing a $4 million restoration of the chapel for the owners, a monastery and a boarding school (Portsmouth Abbey). The chapel’s wood frame and stained-glass stripes were not engineered to withstand Rhode Island coastal conditions, Mr. DeMatteo said. “The building has leaked and twisted in the wind since the day it opened,” he added, causing uneven stress on the Lippold sculpture.

The restoration of the elaborate sculpture is a complicated work itself

Image: Richard Lippold Foundation

Beth Lipman at RISD

A visit to Beth Lipman's RISD museum installation that spirals through the museums of Providence

Beth Lipman's installation (through Jan. 18, at RISD Museum of Art) is primarily made up of clear glass -- blown and/or hot-sculpted with some monochromatic black and white glass here and there. Lipman is known for her blown-glass still lifes, usually inspired by or echoing real-life paintings. Returning the glassware in the paintings to their three-dimensional, glittery glory, paradoxically makes them less real, but also faintly scary.

Image:  (Beth Lipman:  Fruit on a Table (after the American School), 2001)

Somerville Open Studios Call for Participation

The call for entries for Somerville Open Studios runs through January 30.  The actual event will take place on May 29-30, 2009.

2009 Registration runs through Jan 30th 2009

To register and participate in the Somerville Open Studios:  Your home or studio exhibit space must be located in Somerville, MA

Banditos Misteriosos T-Shirt Contest

Boston's favorite proponents of urban fun Banditos Misteriosos are looking for help to design a new t-shirt.

Fashion is a fickle industry. It turns out that our soon-to-be old t-shirts [above] are sooo out of style. So to help the group become "in" again, we need your help: Design a new t-shirt!

Please make sure that your design includes the following three items:

1) Our name.... (it can be the full "Banditos Misteriosos" or just "Banditos")

2) Our beloved, mustachioed mascot, Señor Cloudy.

3) Our website, www.misteriosos.org

Art Inspired by Forest Hills Cemetery

John Kramer has an installation and exhibit about Forest Hills Cemetery at the Art Institute of Boston's gallery near Porter Square.

A photographic installation and meditation on natural and sculpted forms in the context of a 19th-century garden cemetery—Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.

Loving all mixtures of cemeteries and art this seems quite good.

Audubon's Early Drawings

Harvard has its collection of early drawings by John James Audubon online as he worked toward becoming the artist he is now known to be.  The drawings are also available in the book Audubon: Early Drawings.

Buy:  Audubon: Early Drawings.  (Image:  Crested Mergansers by Audubon from the Harvard collection).

Clinton, MA: Hub of Russian Icons

The Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, MA is the only museum of its kind.  It was founded by non-religious icon collector and plastics entrepreneur Gordon Lankton.

Lankton's international company is called Nypro and it's Clinton's largest employer. He says it took months, and many visits, to set up shop in Russia. On days off he visited monasteries, museums and flea markets. He scored his first Russian Icon for twenty dollars. 45 trips later Lankton decided to build this 2.5 million dollar museum. It's in Clinton for a reason.

LANKTON: I made my money in Clinton and I said I'm going to spend my money in Clinton.

Paul Revere: Werewolf Hunter

Revere:  Revolution in Silver is a graphic novel set in colonial Boston where Paul Revere isn't just a silversmith and a hero of the American Revolution but must battle monsters like werewolves as well.  Werewolves are vulnerable to silver so that could work.

 Listen, my children, and you shall hear… Whoa, hold it right there. This is one Paul Revere story that is not fit for children’s ears or eyes. Revere: Revolution in Silver is scary, gory, and sort of sick, actually. That’s not meant as criticism, just a warning to anyone who might confuse this dark graphic novel with a nice, patriotic comic book for kids.

Lavallee’s concept is wickedly clever: Revere, the legendary midnight rider, is recast as a caped crusader who patrols the highways and byways of colonial Massachusetts to protect every Middlesex village and farm from–werewolves."

A Fab Lab for Providence

Providence will get its own Fab Lab to be developed in a collaboration between MIT's Fab Lab project and the Providence arts group AS220

"The nonprofit community arts group AS220 is planning to join a high-profile Massachusetts Institute of Technology initiative that will bring a hands-on high-tech workshop to the city. Backers hope it will become a new center for innovation in Providence.

David Ortiz, AS220’s development director, confirmed today in a brief telephone interview with Providence Business News that plans are underway for the organization to partner with MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms in the creation of a Fab Lab here. The city’s tech community has been buzzing about the idea for months.

The Fab Lab will be part of a $12 million mixed-use development project that AS220 hopes to complete by the summer of 2010. The organization recently took ownership of the facility it is planning to develop: the Mercantile Block, a 50,000-square-foot building on Washington Street next to AS220’s recently refurbished Dreyfus Hotel building

Great to see the Fab Lab initiative spreading in New England as well as overseas. Another example of the maker renaissance trend.

MIT Student Loan Art Program

 

MIT loans out art from its collection to students to live with while at school.

“The largest program of its kind in the country, the Student Loan Art Program at MIT loans out 400 prints each year, including pieces by renowned artists such as Andy Warhol and Berenice Abbott.
Students enter their top three choices into the lottery and receive their results Sept. 16, and pieces that are not claimed by September 18 are distributed on a first-come first-serve basis. The students are trusted to look after these pieces for a year and return them the week before Spring finals week. So far, none of the art has been damaged or destroyed. Usually around 1000 students enter the lottery.

Introduction to New Media Art at AXIOM on Sept. 9

AXIOM Gallery is holding a panel to help introduce people to new media art on Tuesday.

""What Is New Media?"
An open panel discussion constructed with the JP community in mind, featuring local professionals and artists from the field of new media. This talk is intended to help de-mystify the genre by furthering understanding and access.

Panelists include:
George Fifield - Director, Boston Cyberarts
Dana Moser - Director, MassArt SIM Program
Helen Thorington - Founder, Turbulence
Halsey Burgund - New Media Artist

Info:
Location: AXIOM Gallery, 141 Green Street, Jamaica Plain, MA
Time: September 9 at 7:00 P.M.
Cost: Free

Art EnCAMPment on the Boston Harbor Islands

Art EnCAMPment on Bumpkin Island provided an opportunity for artists to move to a Boston Harbor Island and create their work.

"Ten teams of artists effectively marooned themselves on the Boston Harbor island [Bumpkin Island] from Thursday, August 28, through Monday, September 1, with only whatever art and survival supplies they could carry with them. Their mission in exile was to create “site-specific” performances or installations.

The whole expedition was organized by the Berwick Research Institute and Studio Soto.

"Part residency, part survivalist experiment, and fully impressionable, malleable, speculative and reflective, the Encampment allows artists to explore new possibilities, removed from the distractions and discourses of the mainland. Yet, like an explorer with a partially drawn map to be fully formed in expedition, the project presents itself as a microcosm of transparent, possible attributes and actions for a culture stripped bare and invented anew.

You can see some of the work from kino-eye's Flickrstream.  (Images above:  Berwick Research Inst.)

Boston Comics Roundtable and Their First Anthology

Boston comics creators meet weekly in Harvard Square as the Boston Comics Roundtable.  They have their first anthology "Inbound" available now.  Looking forward to checking it out.

"The Boston Comics Roundtable was created in 2006 to unite Boston-based comics creators in the spirit of camaraderie and professional development. This year commences the start of a new publishing initiative to spread the word – Boston is the hot new town for comics!

Richard Garet at Axiom Gallery

Axiom Gallery will be having another experimental music event featuring Richard Garet and Kellam Scott.

"Garet is a New York based sound and video artist. He is interested in the phenomena found and produced in aural and visual time-based media, in nature's processes and human beings' relationship with both artificial and natural environments. Garet explores the it-referential, communicational, and sensory characteristics of the various media he uses. Additionally, he focuses on the investigation of aural and visual spatial-contexts, relational structures, process, materiality and form. In the past he has collaborated with such artists as Brendan Murray, Andre Goncalves, Bruce McClure, Sawako and Shimpei Takada. He has releases on the Non-Visual Objects and Winds Measure Recordings label, and forthcoming releases on AND/OAR, Leeraum and Unframed. (www.richardgaret.com)"

Listen to Garet here

Info:
Location:  Axiom Gallery,141 Green Street, Boston MA
Time:  August 28th at 8:00pm
Cost:  $7 (Suggested)

Art Installation in Providence's North Burial Ground

Jay Critchley has installed art in an unusual venue:  the grounds and mausoleums of Providence's North Burial Ground.

“There's art inside the crypt. "Cryptic Providence" features installations throughout this 110-acre public cemetery (there were also staged performances in June and another is planned for Sept. 27, the day before the show closes). Critchley's own piece, "Final Passage," sits in the mausoleum's entrance. It's a vintage Chevy mummified in bandages woven artfully across the hood. He has suspended a handful of Little Trees air fresheners above the car (I guess if there's anywhere you'd need an air freshener, it would be a mausoleum). It's a bold work, slyly tying oil consumption to mortality, and it trumpets Critchley's camp aesthetic.  (Image:  Jay Critchley's 'Mummy Car')

Info:
Cryptic Providence: More Than a Graveyard
On view through September 28.
North Burial Ground,
5 Branch Ave.
Providence, RI
401-621-6123
www.arttixri.com/performance_info.cfm?PID=1688
www.jaycritchley.com

Experimental Music at Axiom

AXIOM Gallery will host a free panel on experimental music tonight.

“Former director of Mobius Artists Group & current director of Studio Soto, Jed Speare will be mediating a panel discussion on contemporary experimental music.

Composers Ernst Karel, Brendan Murray, and Jessica Rylan  set forth to answer common questions that surround contemporary experimental music through intimate discussions and performances of their works. Joined by Boston Phoenix writer, WZBC radio host and producer Susanna Bolle; Weirdo Records proprietor and Human Hairs performer Angela Sawyer; and panel organizer, moderator, composer and multidisciplinary artist Jed Speare; this symposium sets forth a lively discourse on the different ways contemporary music is created, how it converses and converges with other arts and how it relates to our lives.

Structured as a series of short audio examples and artist talks followed by open discussion, this event will strive to begin to elucidate the sources, methods, and practices of new music while relating them to the broader artistic and cultural context of our time.”

Above:  Jessica Rylan

Info:  Tuesday, August 19, 2008 7:00pm; Free

Text in Video at AXIOM Gallery

AXIOM Gallery's new exhibit, Text in Video, opened recently.

“Text in Video explores how through use of the written word in time-based media, artists make the journey from awe to anger to internal beauty to humor. Sometimes the integration is implemented purely for the sake of visual beauty, sometimes to explore what it means to be a community. Words are used to convey thought, to redefine ways to approach literature and witticisms, even to express distaste in a decaying system. The participating artists explore various applications of text in video as a vehicle to both deliver and enhance their message.

Featuring works by: Aya Karpinska with Daniel C. Howe, Bebe Beard, Tony Cokes, Nance Davies, Monica Gunderson, and Lior Neiger" (Image credit: Lior Neiger, Intellectual Property, 2008)

Bebe Beard's Digital Orpheus: The Power of Orpheus's Art

Gallery Info:
Location: Ground floor level of the Green Street Subway ("T") station on the Orange line, at the corner of Amory and Green Streets in Jamaica Plain, MA

Wednesday, Thursday 6-9 pm, Saturday, 2-5 pm, or by appointment.

Why is Harvard's Werner Otto Hall Being Torn Down?

An interesting article about why Werner Otto Hall, the building housing Harvard's Busch-Reisinger Museum of German art, is being torn down.

"Today, 17 years later, its exterior walls have deteriorated so badly that Harvard says the only way to repair them would be to take them off entirely and start over.

Yet this disaster was created by the best and the brightest.

The client was Harvard, or more specifically, its Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The architect was the firm Gwathmey Siegel, known for its superb 1992 addition to another museum, the Guggenheim in New York, among other buildings. The general contractor was Walsh Brothers, a Boston firm now in its fourth generation that has long been regarded as one of the region’s best.

***

"So what happened? What’s the diagnosis? To put it simply, the guys who worried about the museum’s art were not the guys who worried about the weather. It was a classic failure of communication. We'll call them the art guys and the weather guys."

In author Robert Campbell's terms, the art guys are the curators and museum officials (the clients) and the weather guys are the architects, engineers and builders. 

Failure to communicate does seem clear but the article seems to come down more on the architects' side or at least that a failure to communicate means both sides are equally at fault.  This seems strange given the unequal levels of knowledge about construction    It seems like the architects, etc. are the ones who really have to communicate though.  Clients can make their demands, suggestions, requests but the architects need to explain what is doable.  The clients aren't going to know what the moisture effects are going to be.

There also seems to be a bit of a disconnect on the "weather guys'" side as to how buildings will be used.  One expert Campbell talks to refers to problems at "the Davis Museum at Wellesley, a building by another Pritzker-winning architect, Rafael Moneo, the curators themselves caused problems. They ruptured the vapor barrier by drilling holes to hang artworks."  But couldn't this action be anticipated by the fact that it is a museum?

It seems like Werner Otto Hall represents the product of a time when architects considered exteriors and use of space more than the actual use of the building.  (Image:  Harvard)

Cape Martin Johnson Heade Painting Sold for $1 Million

The Martin Johnson Heade painting that a Cape family discovered on their walls was auctioned off for over $1 million, twice its estimate.  (Image of the painting 'Haying on the Marsh' from Eldred's Auction House).

Antiplex: Site for Independent Movie Theatres in Boston

Antiplex is a site that lists each day's showings of finer cinema from the independent theatres in the Boston area:  Cambridge's Brattle and Harvard Film Archive, Brookline's Coolidge Corner Theatre and Boston's MFA.

The layout (sample above) is fairly simple although does include stills and trailer videos.  The most useful feature is its aggregation of the frequently changing schedules of art houses that don't conform to the Friday changeovers common to the multiplexes.

Brookline Mural Photos from Sarah Hearts Design

Sarah Hearts Design will be featuring photos of murals along Harvard Street in Brookline.  Today's is a nice trompe l'oeil tribute to the Kennedys by Joshua Winer.  (Image from Sarah Hearts Design)

Somerville ArtBeat: July 18-19

The theme of this year's ArtBeat festival in Davis Square is "Green" emphasizing sustainability and biking.

"Green can convey many things: the environment; greed and money; newness and growth; and the Green Line T coming to Somerville. We hope to explore questions like: What is our relationship with the natural environment? How can nature inspire creativity and artistic production? How can we protect and preserve our natural world? Other interpretations of the theme might evoke questions like: How can money shape, support or corrupt artistic production? How might the Green Line coming to Union Square shape urban development and design?"

Urban Gardening at Providence Artspace Firehouse 13

Sarah Zurier set up Green Zone, a "wartime" garden installation, at Firehouse 13 in Providence.

"America has a long tradition that links cultivating gardens on the homefront to wartime conservation. Posters and other propaganda from World Wars I and II show Uncle Sam urging Americans to grow their own food in Victory Gardens. On the other hand, in the aftermath of September 11 and throughout six years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Uncle Sam says: "Go shopping." The message persists in 2008, via stimulus checks from the IRS, despite worldwide food shortages and record-high food prices.

Green Zone at Firehouse 13 is an organic vegetable, herb, and flower garden planted in the detritus of wartime consumption: old tires, shopping bags, shoes, and other repurposed containers. The plants are mostly leafy (herbs, kale, beet greens, lettuce) or develop their fruit underground (radishes). Most of the tires were pulled out of the Woonasquatucket River during the Earth Day cleanup in April 2008.

Green Zone grows all summer long. Firehouse 13 residents will share its produce. Stop by anytime this summer, and look out for Provflux V, August 7-11. Special thanks to Southside Community Land Trust for starting many of the plants from seed"

Welcome Sculpture for Allston

Although the designer Peter Brooks talks about avoiding the formal representational statuary in coming up with his design it seems similar to the piece near Porter Square in Cambridge above).

"Rotating blue panels reaching 22 feet into the air may not look like a welcome mat, but they greet travelers as they enter Allston."

Big Bugs at Garden in the Woods

David Rogers' Big Bug sculptures return to Garden in the Woods in Framingham from July 12 through October 31.  With familiar insects like bees and ants as well as the less familiar praying mantis and assassin bug it looks like it will be good.  And the sculptures look great.  More images here.

(Image:  2008 New England Wild Flower Society/William Cullina)

Graffiti Stenciling Workshop in Davis

Annelies Kamen will be teaching a course on graffiti stenciling at Willoughby and Baltic in Davis Square.

"The immediacy and poignancy of stencil art has made it a prominent tool in DIY political, social and artistic movements. Stencils are a creative and easy way to express opinions, spread messages and expand the boundaries of your artistic language.

This workshop will teach you how to make your own stencil from a found or original image for use on clothing, in fine arts, as wall decoration, or for any purpose you choose. Among the topics covered will be altering images to translate to stencil format, single and multi-layered techniques, large scale and portable stencils, types of paint and stencil frames to use, and how best to use your stencils on different surfaces.

All materials are included in this workshop. Please bring an image or two you would like to use in a digital format (thumbdrive or CD). If you do not provide an image, we will provide one to you for the class. Letter stencils will also be provided if you would like your stencil to have text elements."

Info: 
July 9th 6:30pm - 9:30pm (Reserve by July 7th)

"Price:
Members: $20 plus $15 materials
Non-Members: $40 plus $15 materials
(Sign up for Willoughby and Baltic membership at the same time and save $5!)"

The Art of Meat: "Meat After Meat Joy" at Pierre Menard

Pierre Menard Gallery's new exhibit focuses on meat as the subject for artistic inspiration and as an artistic medium:

"Visitors to the gallery can examine a flag made of pure raw meat and meat fat.

The flag’s sculptor, Betty Hirst, also produced an opened book made of frozen raw meat and, possibly disturbing, a baby girl on a pink blanket composed of dried meat." (Image:  21 Chops, David Raymond)

Summer Resort Exhibit

The Boston Athenaeum has an exhibit has an exhibit celebrating the attractions of northern New England in the summer from the days before air conditioning.

“Always Delightfully Cool” examines the history of leisure travel and tourism in nineteenth-century New England through advertising prints, photographs, maps, sheet music covers, and large-scale chromolithographs. Northern New England, with its varied landscape of beaches, mountains, and lakes, boasted many of the nation’s most popular vacation sites, including Maine’s Moosehead Lake and Mount Desert Island, the seaside resorts of the North and South Shores of Massachusetts, New Hampshire’s White Mountains and Lake Winnipesaukee, and the northern Vermont towns of Burlington and Stowe."

Video Screens Connect Brookline and Roxbury

Video screens in Coolidge Corner and Dudley Square will allow residents to explore each others' experiences in John Ewing's new project called Virtual Street Corners.

"From June 12 - June 21, 2008 (with an “opening” on June 18, from 4-7pm) the storefronts of Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner, Brookline and Stash’s Grill in Dudley Square, Roxbury will be transformed into large video screens, providing pedestrians of each neighborhood with a portal into one another’s worlds. Running 24/7, life-size screen images and AV technology will enable real-time chat between residents of the two neighborhoods. Though only 2.4 miles apart and connected by the Route 66 bus, few people from either neighborhood ever visit the other. Using technology developed to bridge geographical distances, Virtual Street Corners instead traverses the social boundaries that separate two cultural and transportation hubs with important historical connections."

Stolen Fort Point Art

Art was stolen from a public installation in Fort Point and the artists want it back:

"Hub pols and artists living in South Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood are pleading for the return of two works stolen last weekend from an outdoor public art project featuring 25 windows hung along a fenceline.

The installation, titled “Windows onto Fort Point – the Artists Point of View,” was organized by the Fort Point Cultural Coalition and features various artists’ takes on the gentrification of the waterfront neighborhood.

***

Three windows were taken late Saturday, but one was returned anonymously the following night, said project organizers. Boston police are investigating."

Political Art?

Boston-born artist Yazmany Arboleda's New York exhibit on the "character" assassination of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama sparked visits from the NYPD and Secret Service yesterday.

"This morning, a Boston-born performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, tried to set up a provocative art exhibition in a vacant storefront on West 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan with the title, “The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama,” in neatly stenciled letters on the plate glass windows at street level.

By 9:30 a.m., New York City police detectives and Secret Service agents had shut down the exhibition, and building workers had quickly covered over the inflammatory title with large sheets of brown paper and blue masking tape. The gallery is across the street from the southern entrance to The New York Times building.

The police officers declined to answer any questions, and at first would not permit reporters to speak with Mr. Arboleda, who was wearing a black T-shirt and making cellphone calls from inside the makeshift gallery.

Later, Mr. Arboleda, who is 27, said in an interview: “It’s art. It’s not supposed to be harmful. It’s about character assassination — about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media.” He added, “It’s about the media.”

Mr. Arboleda said the exhibition was to open on Thursday and run all day."

Anish Kapoor @ ICA

The ICA's exhibit of Anish Kapoor, famous for his popular "bean" in Chicago's Millenium Park, opens today. 

Reviews from the NY Times (mixed)

"Whether with blazingly reflective metal surfaces or dark, plush, seemingly infinite interiors, his pieces dispense multiple visual thrills and mysteries. But the same effects can make his work appear tricky, decorative and shallow. It hasn’t helped that they seem to have been concocted by playing fast and slick with the innovations of his Minimalist and Post-Minimalist predecessors."

and the Globe (more positive)

a "mind-bending, and oftentimes ravishing show."

Fort Point Channel Arts Walk Begins Today

The Fort Point Spring Art Walk begins tonight at 4pm and continues through the weekend.

The event "features seventy five artists opening their studios. Pick up a map and explore the studios of painters, jewelers, ceramicists, photographers, textile artists, and more! Talk with artists in their studios and discover new works and treasured favorites. Explore our changing neighborhood and see the waterfront warehouse district that is recognized as one of New Enland's oldest and largest arts communities."

There's a list of participating artists and their locations so you can see what kind of stuff they are producing.

Friday, May 9:  4pm - 7pm
Saturday and Sunday, May 10th - 11: 12 noon - 5pm

Museum of Bad Art Opens Davis Square Branch

The appetite for bad art is relentless so the Dedham-based Museum of Bad Art will open a new branch right by the Somerville Theatre's toilets.  The new outpost will open May 14th.

You can bring bad art into your home now too (if it isn't already there) with the publication of the Museum of Bad Art's Masterworks catalogue.

Disappearance of Polaroid Film Sparks Dismay and Hyperbole Among Photographers

The extinction of Polaroid film by the once-great Cambridge (now Waltham) company sparked dismay in photographers who loved the film like John Waters "who’s shot a Polaroid of each person who’s come into his apartment since 1992—friends, interviewers, deliverymen, everyone."   

And it also drove at least one photographer to a somewhat extreme comparison:  "It’s the worst disaster since Hiroshima,” shouts Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, who shoots large-format Polaroid Type 809." 

Those photos of Paris Hilton or Katie Couric  just won't be the same.  That is a disaster.  Like Hiroshima.

COLLISION1101:superartificial at Axiom Gallery

Axiom Gallery's new show is COLLISION1101:superartificial, the thirteenth group show from Collision Collective and it "explores       the lingering role that superstition plays in art and technology." 

The opening reception is May 9th from 6pm to 9pm and the show runs through May 25. (Image:  Tim Murdoch, "Who's that").

Museum of Antiquated Technology

Mark Vess is the curator of the private Museum of Antiquated Technology in Hanson, MA where he has collected examples of America's technological past:

"Its founder and curator, Mark Vess, has collected old telephones, radios and knick-knacks of all kinds since he was seven or eight years old. Some forty years later, Vess says his mission is to educate today's kids about America's technological past. Vess gives a few select tours of his collections every year to school groups, and collectors clubs."

No website so "[h]e asks that he be contacted, under "Vess," in the old-fashioned telephone directory."

Open Studios: North Cambridge and Somerville

Artists will be hosting visitors in their studios in North Cambridge on April 26-27 and in Somerville on May 3-4.  Check their websites or our calendar for more information.

Edith Wharton House Nears Foreclosure

Tomorrow's the last day to contribute to the organization that runs Edith Wharton's Berkshires mansion, the Mount, which is facing foreclosure following heavy reliance on debt financing for their renovation.

"The Mount is faced with imminent foreclosure, which could result in         this National Historic Landmark being closed to the public forever.       

Please make a contribution now! To prevent foreclosure, The Mount estimates         that it needs to raise up to $3 million through the Save The Mount campaign         before April 24, 2008."

From their website it looks like they've raised about $760,000 at this point so things don't look great with only one day to go.  However, they say they have a matching fund pledge which brings them considerably closer. (Image above:  Edith Wharton Restoration)

Blogging the Old State House Renovation

The Bostonian Society is blogging the renovation of  their headquarters the Old State House in the Financial District. 

"[O]ur team has been up on the scaffolding exploring the damage that has been caused by time and weather. The goal with our preservation project is to save as much historic material as possible, but replace when necessary. The top and bottom rails on the tower balustrades are badly deteriorated and in need of work."

There's a lot of interesting pictures of the work on the blog (like this one of the scaffolding being installed) and the examination of the tower that is usually inaccessible.

Harmony in the Age of Noise at Tufts

Bruce Odland's Harmony in the Age of Noise at Tufts will open on April 23rd on the roof of the Tisch Library there.

"Anthropologist and poet David Guss invited sound artist, Bruce Odland to create "Harmony in the Age of Noise." Along with sculptor Mark McNamara and media artist Michael Luck Schneider, they will collaborate with over 80 undergraduates and grad students as well as professors and staff at Tufts University. Together they are designing and building a sonic observation post that will allow visitors to navigate through sound maps of the campus and surrounding community. Harmony in the Age of Noise will be a parabolic gazebo where the hub of students and traffic are harmonized through a mix of a real time feed, a collection of stored psychoacoustic maps, and visitors' sounds programmed to play like hourly chimes."

"Atop the highest hill in the Greater Boston area, from the sound dial, one can see the entire city. As an individual approaches the sound dial, they will hear nothing. Underneath a parabolic dome, the sound of the dial will be encased in a channel of sound. This is the nature of the parabola; Creating a uniform gravitation field without air resistance, parabolic reflectors harness electromagnetic radiation to a specific focal point - in this case, the sound dial.

If the dial is facing Powderhouse rotary, the sounds of cars circling around will shroud you, and images of cars will appear in the whale’s eye. If you are facing Tufts’ computer lab, you will see students at the computers, and hear the clicking of keys. I created a spiritual sound map of Boston, which includes a full moon drum circle held by musician friends of mine in Jamaica Plain, as well as Kirtan at the Krishna Temple on Commonwealth Ave. If you have slowed down enough, as you cross from one area to the next, the sounds and images begin to cross-fade. To encourage human interaction, the dial’s colors and sounds react to the number of hands placed upon it."

Visualizing Computer Viruses at MIT

MIT Media Lab graduate student Alex Dragulescu uses algorithms to visualize computer viruses like the MyDoom virus above:

"Dragulescu used algorithms to find recurring patterns in the source code of viruses and Trojans and then fed the results into a visualization algorithm."

Axiom Gallery Exhibit: Art and Math

Axiom Gallery's new exhibit Art and Math opened recently and runs through April 27th.

"Art and       Math explores the artists use of mathematical concepts in sculpture,       photography, and new media. The show will also examine how, through the       use of mathematical thought artist can make the journey from awe to beauty       to humor."

One of the exhibiting artists Keith Peters discusses the opening which was attended by well-known programmer Stephen Wolfram and posts a video of the scene at the opening (above).

The piece he exhibited is related to his game Gravity Pods that you can try here.

The image above is by another of the exhibit artists Nathan Selikoff

This work by Kevin Van Aelst uses egg yolk to represent a Cantor set.

Somerville's Brickbottom Gallery Turns 20

The Brickbottom Artist Building, a live/work space for artists in Somerville known for its annual Open Studios program and curated exhibitions marks 20 years with a new exhibit opening March 30.

"To celebrate the Brickbottom Artist Building’s 20th anniversary and Somerville Open Studios’ 10th anniversary, Brickbottom Gallery will exhibit “Milestones and Benchmarks” — ways to measure longevity or achievements and a method of marking time — from March 30 through May 4. An opening reception will be held Sunday, March 30, from 4 to 6 p.m."

Sculptures of nails by John Bisbee at the Portland Museum of Art

Nail-based sculptures by John Bisbee at the Portland Museum of Art.

"It all started when Bisbee was a student in college. He was raiding abandoned houses for found objects to use in his art when he came upon an old bucket of nails.

"I kicked the bucket and it flipped over," Bisbee recalls, "and the nails had cohered, oxidized — they'd rusted into the bucket shape. And it was just such an obvious thing of beauty — it was so clearly above anything I had ever envisioned making myself. And I sat down on the bed, and I knew that I needed to get some nails.'"

You can hear Bisbee discuss his work at the museum on March 22 at 2pm.

The exhibit ends March 23, 2008.

(Image:  Cocoon from Portland Museum of Art)

MA Stolen Paintings Found in RI

Paintings by Courbet and Hassam stolen 30 years ago in Shrewsbury have re-emerged in Rhode Island.

"Three paintings stolen more than 30 years ago are now the subject of a court fight after turning up in the home of a prominent Rhode Islander. 

The paintings, valued at about $1 million, were taken during a violent home invasion in Shrewsbury, Mass., in 1976.

 

Patrick Conley, a lawyer and developer from Bristol, R.I., said he received the paintings from his younger brother as collateral on a $22,000 loan."

Nice that he is trying to keep the paintings.