Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa by Marilyn Chase (2020). Courtesy of Chronicle Books.
The life and career of Ruth Asawa was nothing short of amazing, as this biography shows. A Japanese American forced to relocate to an internment camp in Arkansas during World War II, she overcame the odds to become an acclaimed artist. Moreover, Asawa channelled that experience into her work, developing a unique style of woven sculptures, her use of wire inspired by the internment camp fences designed to unjustly imprison her people. A graduate of famed Black Mountain College in North Carolina who was mentored by Josef Albers, Asawa maintained a thriving practice even as a mother of six in an interracial marriage. Author Marilyn Chase spent five years researching her life story, drawing in fascinating details on the artist’s letters, diaries, and sketches, and interviewing Asawa’s loved ones. The book also includes 60 images of Asawa and her work, including portraits taken by her
The Crossing Releases New Film, YOU CAN PLAN ON ME, Focusing On The Experience Of Aloneness
You can Plan on Me focuses on the experience of aloneness, of not being able to do the thing we love and rely on.by BWW News Desk
Today, GRAMMY-winning new music choir The Crossing released a new film, You can Plan on Me, a reflective new composition based on works from their long history of commissioned world premieres. The project is conceived by conductor Donald Nally, who also composed the film score, largely based on Aaron Helgeson s A way far home, which was written for and premiered by The Crossing in December 2017. The film is by Luke Carpenter and Emma Oehlers, with The Crossing s in-house sound producer Paul Vazquez and assistance to the score and sound by Kevin Vondrak. The work is dedicated to the artists of The Crossing in isolation.
Courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
The oeuvre of Titian was subject to a number of shifts in import and sensibility over the course of his career. Whereas the bacchanals, painted for the duke of Alfonso d’Este’s studio in Ferrara, were for the most part joyous and inflected with a certain youthful fervor, during the 1550s Titian worked under the patronage of King Philip II. From 1553 he produced seven mythological paintings, all of which were rather more complex in their treatment of the fallibility of the human condition. Titian defined these paintings as poesie or “painted poems.” These took as their subjects themes from ancient mythology. In
What’s It Like to Be a Museum Horticulturalist? For the Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Gardener, ‘You Never Get to the Bottom of Your Curiosity’
Erika Rumbley talks about keeping the many surprises at the Boston museum, and installing her new holiday chrysanthemum display.
December 17, 2020
The courtyard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Photo courtesy Ally Schmaling and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Is there any American art institution more steeped in mystery and intrigue than Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?
Born in 1840, Isabella Stewart Gardner, the museum’s founder and namesake, was easily one of the most colorful and talked-about women in Boston society. A dedicated patron of the arts, she collected works by the likes of Titian, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Manet, Degas, and John Singer Sargent, with whom, over the course of 30 years, she became especially close. She kept all her treasures artworks, antique furniture, and corresponden
The courtyard of the Gardner Museum prepared for holiday visitors. Now that the museum is closed, the plants are being donated to organizations like the Veronica Robles Cultural Center and the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. (Courtesy Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)
The lush display of festive reds, silvers and dark forest greens that fill the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum s courtyard each holiday season was looking as beautiful as ever this year, director Peggy Fogelman recalled. But the masses of poinsettia, pine and blooming amaryllis had to be dismantled after Mayor Marty Walsh announced Tuesday that museums must close their doors again as part of the rollback to Boston s economic reopening plan.