John Singer Sargent’s Secret Black Male Muse

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Alina Tugend

A detail from John Singer Sargent’s “Thomas McKeller” (1917-21), the only portrait he did of the model as himself.

Thomas McKeller worked as an elevator operator in an elite Boston hotel. His life, which spanned the first half of the 20th century, was largely unheralded. But the countenance of McKeller, who was African-American, is everywhere in Boston, in the work of one of the most prominent painters of the Gilded Age, John Singer Sargent. McKeller appears as classical gods and goddesses in a mural in the rotunda of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; as a World War I soldier in a stairwell of Harvard University’s Widener Library; and as the body in a portrait of A. Lawrence Lowell, an early-20th-century Harvard president. But McKeller never appears as a black man. Although it is not definitively known, it is thought possible that the relationship was also romantic. [More]

Lost, and Now Found, Art From the Civil Rights Era

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Hilarie M. Sheets

Panel 1 of “Struggle: From the History of the American People.” The work, by Jacob Lawrence, was received with some ambivalence by the art world. The collection was eventually purchased by a private collector who later resold each panel separately. The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via PEM

During the civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) — one of the leading black artists of his day — painted a series of 30 panels re-examining early American history. The series, “Struggle: From the History of the American People,” presented a radically integrated view of the nation’s founding, including unheralded contributions of African-Americans in the fight to build a new democracy. The majority of these little-seen paintings have been reunited for the first time in roughly 60 years in “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle,” on view at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., through April 26. [More]

Lucian Freud’s Self Portraits: But What Do They Mean?

THE NEW YORK TIMES 
By Farah Nayeri

“Painter Working, Reflection,” 1993, is considered to be Lucian Freud’s greatest self-portrait. It is part of the exhibition “Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits,” which will be at London’s Royal Academy of Arts starting Oct. 27.

LONDON — In 1993, the British painter Lucian Freud, who had just turned 70, took on one of the boldest projects of his career: producing a full-length portrait of himself in his birthday suit. He stood naked and painted in the top-floor London studio where he had spent so many of his waking hours. “Painter Working, Reflection,” is now considered by critics and art historians to be his greatest self-portrait. The portrait is sure to be a highlight of “Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits,” which will be at London’s Royal Academy of Arts (Oct. 27 through Jan. 26), before opening at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on March 1. [More]

Creepy, Colorful, Inflatable Sculptures Bring Nick Cave Joy. So He's Bringing Them To Boston

WBUR.ORG
By Amelia Mason

Artist Nick Cave's inflatable sculpture for his "Augment" project in Boston is on display at the Boston Center for The Arts (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

“How’s it going?” Ayako Maruyama asked one passerby. “Do you want to write down what brings you joy?” The group was asking residents to contribute to a project organized by the visual and performance artist Nick Cave, (not to be confused with the musician), who would incorporate some of their creations into a public art piece. “Augment,” which opened Aug. 8, was commissioned by the Boston public art presenter Now + There. It involves two main components: a trippy-looking vinyl building wrap (functionally, a mural) stuck to the side of an empty bank building in Upham’s Corner, and a collection of huge inflatable sculptures, which currently reside in the Cyclorama in the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End. [More]

Inflatable Cartoon Monsters Feel Like ‘A Form of Protest’ at South End’s Cyclorama

THE BOSTON GLOBE
By Murray Whyte

Some of the inflatables in Nick Cave’s “Augment”

The suits’ spectacular sheen was leavened with dark purpose: Nick Cave made his first in the aftermath of the Rodney King race riots in LA, when he felt under threat simply for being black. The suits, which conceal every inch of their wearers, were designed as armor against prejudice, meeting terror with beauty. It was always an uneasy balance, a tension that made his work transcend simple wonder. Here, that much remains. “Augment,” Cave calls it, is a departure from the work that made his name, though the parallels aren’t hard to find. A new commission for Now + There, a Boston-based public art nonprofit, “Augment” seduces — bright colors! Cute bunnies! — then repels. [More]

The Righteous Art of Nick Cave

GQ MAGAZINE
By Benjy Hansen-Bundy

The visual artist Nick Cave on the porous boundary between art and fashion and how clothing can be an agent of transformation.

Two years ago I spent a long weekend in western Massachusetts and took a day trip to MASS MoCA, the colossal contemporary art museum in an old brick factory building in North Adams. Hanging from the ceiling was a shimmering forest of gossamer strings dangling what looked like 20,000 reflective wind chimes, all spinning. It was beautiful. Then I looked up close at one of the wind-chime things and realized it was a silvery cutout of a handgun. And for a little while, I forgot to breathe. That’s the thing. Cave’s sense of justice is contagious. And he has style. Earlier in June, he wore a leather kilt and some Margiela boots to Virgil Abloh’s first art show. When I asked him about the outfit, he said, “It's not a statement about anything. It's not about a queer point of view. It’s about: This is what I like to wear. [More]

Baroque ‘Esther’ Oratorio’s Fate Overturned by Miraculous Rescue From Obscurity

TIMES OF ISREAL
By Penny Schwartz

Detail from 'The Wrath of Ahasuerus,' by Jan Steen, circa 1668. (Public domain)

BOSTON — An unusual, 18th century oratorio was nearly lost to history — until its circumstances were overturned and it was rescued from obscurity. Now, a production earlier this month by the Miryam Ensemble has brought the rarely performed “Esther” by Cristiano Giuseppe Lidarti to a new, 21st-century audience. Dated to 1774, the entire richly textured, Baroque oratorio is sung in Hebrew, with a libretto translated and adapted by the Venetian Rabbi Jacob Raphael ben Simah Judah Saraval. Based on the story of Esther, the heroine of Purim, the Hebrew version is an adapted translation of Handel’s 1732 English libretto. It is the only known full oratorio in Hebrew from the Baroque period, according to scholars. [More]

Multimedia Installation Reveals The Complex History of Earth's Mountain Ranges

ARTDAILY

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1526-1569), The Tower of Babel, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- Throughout recorded history, mountains have risen from the land and exerted influence on human life. As their physical forms have shifted over time, so too have the narratives defining their cultural significance. Now a source of fascination and wonder, mountains were once considered threats to humanity, sites of catastrophe, and a means of divine punishment. They have always occupied the cultural imagination, but their history has been complex. Mountains and the Rise of Landscape reveals our common understanding of mountains as a human, discursive construction, one that has been shaped and redefined over millennia. [More]

Five more museums acquire art from Souls Grown Deep Foundation

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Hilarie M. Sheets

“Sometimes I Get Emotion From the Game,” by Purvis Young, is among the acquisitions by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, one of five institutions getting works from Souls Grown Deep.

In a strategic effort to reshape the narrative of American art, the Souls Grown Deep Foundation will help five museums acquire paintings, sculptures and works on paper by self-taught African-American artists of the South. These acquisitions bring to 12 the number of museums that have received more than 300 works from the Atlanta-based nonprofit, through gifts and purchase. “There is an awakening of interest in African-American art from museums trying to be inclusive and diverse,” said Maxwell Anderson, president of Souls Grown Deep, who announced the transfer of 51 objects by 30 black self-taught artists to the Brooklyn Museum, the Morgan Library & Museum, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The new acquisitions together are valued at roughly $1.6 million, with the five museums paying a discounted rate of $455,000. [More]

The Museum of Russian Icons opens the first exhibition in more than 50 years of a lost masterpiece

ARTDAILY

Romanov liturgical silver, 1877, part of the imperial dowry of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna Romanova; on loan from a private collection; the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign, New York; NY; the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA; and the Russian History Foundation, Jordanville, NY.

CLINTON, MASS.- The Museum of Russian Icons will be presenting Opulence Rediscovered: the Romanov Liturgical Silver, the first exhibition in more than 50 years of a lost masterpiece, October 19, 2018 – January 13, 2019. This extraordinary set of Russian Orthodox liturgical implements was made in 1877 as part of the imperial dowry of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna Romanova (1853-1920), the only surviving daughter of Russian Emperor Alexander II, who married Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1874, and used this opulent silver set in her private chapel in the Clarence House British Royal Residence in London. Commissioned by the cabinet to the Russian Imperial Court, the Romanov silver set was based on designs by court architect David Grimm (1823 - 1898), one of the creators of the Neo-Byzantine style in Russia. [More]

Icons of the Hellenic world opens at Museum of Russian Icons

ARTDAILY

Riza-Tree of Jesse, c. 1700. Courtesy Museum of Russian Icons, the Tiliakos Collection.

CLINTON,MA---Icons of the Hellenic World is the first major exhibition at the Museum of Russian Icons that focuses exclusively on Greek and Byzantine iconography. On view June 22 – October 21, 2018, the exhibit delves deeply into the links and the continuity of Greek art and culture from Late Antiquity, through Byzantium, to the present. The Museum of Russian Icons is located at 230 Union Street in Clinton, MA. Largely comprised of icons created after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, Icons of the Hellenic World also features works from the Byzantine period (330AD-1453).  [More]

Collector Charlotte Wagner's personal gallery of social justice

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Ted Loos

Museum Review: Art for the Soul in ‘Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth’

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

“The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin,” (1424-1434), the centerpiece of the exhibition “Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth,” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Credit Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

BOSTON — The most beautiful Italian Renaissance painting in the United States, “The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin” by Fra Angelico, is on full-time view but hard to find. Since 1903, the small picture has been in the same spot in the Early Italian Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here, though invisible when you enter the room. It hangs around a corner of a big, jutting-out fireplace. Unless you happened to wander over to a nearby window and glance to your left, you’d miss it. Close looking is precisely what this exquisite show encourages. It’s details that keep you looking: faces of saints as particular as high school yearbook portraits; Christ’s Passion as a stop-motion video scoured by grief and rich with Tuscan color; guiding stars that beam in the sky but also on Mary’s robe. [More]

PEM to host new exhibit on China's imperial women

THE SALEM NEWS
By Arianna MacNeill

Ignatius Sichelbarth (Ai Qimeng) and Yi Lantai and possibly Wang Ruxue, Empress Xiaoxian (detail), Qianlong period (1736-1795), 1777, with repainting possibly in 19th century. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk. Peabody Essex Museum. Gift of Mrs. Elizabeth Sturgis Hinds, 1956. Photo by Walter Silver/PEM.

SALEM, MA---The Peabody Essex Museum is bringing the lives of imperial women of China's Qing dynasty to life in August with help from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The museum received $200,000 to help with the "Empresses of China's Forbidden City" exhibit costs and the exhibit will borrow almost 200 items from the Palace Museum in Beijing. It's planned to run from Aug. 18 through Feb. 10 with a rotation of new objects in November. The exhibit was organized by the Palace Museum, the PEM and the Freer/Sackler in the Smithsonian. The items include not only paintings, but costumes, Buddhist art, jewelry and decorative art, according to the PEM. [More]

Museum of Russian Icons receives major gift of more than 100 works

ARTDAILY

Saint Nicholas, 19th c., The Edward and Joan Simpson Collection. Courtesy Museum of Russian Icons.

CLINTON, MA---The Museum of Russian Icons has announced that Boston area collectors Edward and Joan Simpson have donated their exceptional collection of 18th and 19th century Russian icons and sacred artifacts to the Museum–a donation that will be the largest and most valuable single gift since founder Gordon B. Lankton established the Museum in 2006. The only museum in the US dedicated to Russian icons, the Museum of Russian Icons has the largest collection of icons outside of Russia.... Whereas Gordon Lankton was primarily attracted to the traditional Old Believer style in icons produced from the 15th through 18th centuries that are often characterized by the use of metal, the Simpsons’ collection contains 18th and 19th century icons more openly influenced by European religious art. [More]

RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

"The Martyr" (2014) by John Hooker

John Hooker has a way with sculpture. We’re calling him emotional, an artist that carves surfaces and contours with a high impact on the viewer. He is one of 17 contemporary sculptors featured in the ArtPrize Nine exhibition titled “Rodin and the Contemporary Figurative Tradition” in Grand Rapids, MI. Hooker’s "The Martyr" is constructed of foam and arrows, but his works are sometimes comical blobs or blocks of wood. It is inspired by Saint Sebastian, the subject of generations of artists. Hooker explores this religious story in the tradition of Auguste Rodin, and like Rodin, he created his sculpture as if he’d been a witness to the event. "The Martyr" is on view at the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids through January 2018.

Global highlights of Boston museum in Tokyo

THE JAPAN NEWS
By Robert Reed

Detail of Hanabusa Itcho's “The Death of the Historical Buddha” (1713)

TOKYO---The exhibition “Great Collectors: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” now running at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno Park, Tokyo, has another inherent attraction. Unlike many internationally touring collection-based exhibitions from a single museum, this one has been conceived and compiled specifically for Japan. [One] of the four highlights is located in the Japanese section: the large hanging scroll painting “The Death of the Historical Buddha” (1713) by Hanabusa Itcho, which MFA director Matthew Teitelbaum referred to as one of the masterpieces of Japanese Buddhist art in his address at the press preview before the exhibition’s opening. [More]

For collector Tony Kushner, it’s angels over the breakfast nook

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Brett Sokol

Mark Harris, left, and Tony Kushner in the living room of their Provincetown house. Hanging above is one of Kukuli Velarde’s angel sculptures. Credit Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — “I don’t have a big angel collection, but …” the “Angels in America” playwright Tony Kushner insisted with an embarrassed laugh. After all, evidence to the contrary — via a sculpture’s outstretched wings — nearly smacked a reporter in the head as he entered Mr. Kushner’s home here. Suspended from the ceiling, just past the doorway, was an infant-size ceramic angel created by the Peruvian-born Philadelphia artist Kukuli Velarde — one of four such angels hanging in the house Mr. Kushner shares with his husband, Mark Harris. Provincetown artists (also) feature prominently in their home. [More]

Massachusetts: "Black Madonna" finds space in downtown

THE DAILY ITEMBy

Artists Julia Roth or “Julz,” left, and Cedric “Vise1” Douglas have made a lot of progress on their mural on Munroe Street in downtown Lynn. Image courtesy of Spenser Hasak

LYNN, MA---One of Cedric Douglas’ first attempts at public art ended with an arrest after his efforts to beautify the neighborhood basketball court backfired. More than 20 years later, the tables have turned for Douglas whose work now appears in Boston, legally, of course. Douglas or “Vise1” and his painting partner Julia Roth or “Julz,” are erecting a Black Madonna on the courtyard wall at 114-120 Munroe St., as part of the 10-day mural festival transforming the downtown through public art. His portrait, which he calls “The Black Madonna,” with its Afrofuturism style signifies something spiritual. “It’s spiritual, but you don’t have to be religious to believe it,” he said. “Just her presence is spiritual.” [More]

Moishe House Brookline exhibit puts spotlight on emerging Jewish artists

BROOKLINE WICKED
By Emma R. Murphy

Natalya E. Bernstein'S "For|More" (2017), Oil paint on canvas, 36" x 48"

BROOKLINE, MA---A new art exhibition gives young, up-and-coming Jewish artists a platform from which to share their latest work. Opening on July 27, Moishe House Brookline and Temple Ohabei Shalom are sponsoring the exhibit, “Guarding Memories | Creating Histories,” at the synagogue. In the exhibit seven young Jewish artists reflect on memory and the idea of history and time. The concepts of memory, history and time are particularly applicable to the Jewish community, according to Brookline resident and exhibit co-curator Emily Mogavero.  [More]