American museums begin returning artifacts to India in response to criminal investigation

THE NEW YORK STREET
By Tom Mashberg

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., handed over a mid-19th-century Indian painting that was bought in 2006. Credit Peabody Essex Museum

NEW YORK---Several American museums have begun returning possibly stolen artifacts to India in response to a major federal investigation into the activities of Subhash Kapoor, a dealer identified by authorities as having once run the largest antiquities smuggling operation on American soil. Last week, museums in Hawaii and Massachusetts handed federal officials a total of eight items bought from Mr. Kapoor’s defunct business, Art of the Past, which was on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. [link]

Same-Sex Interfaith Couples Face Roadblock to Marriage in Judaism

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Mark Oppenheimer

MASSACHUSETTS---When Julia Spiegelman and Erina Donnelly, two teachers who met as undergraduates at Bryn Mawr, became engaged, they were looking forward to planning a wedding that included elements from both of their religions. The two women attend Jewish and Catholic services together, and they had hoped to find marriage officiants from both religions, which they did not think would be difficult. But the rabbi told them that she could not perform the wedding. The problem was not that Ms. Spiegelman wanted to marry a woman — it was that she wanted to marry a non-Jewish woman. [link]

Newfound 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' Discovered in Ancient Text

LIVE SCIENCE
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor

An image of the gospel's 25th oracle. This oracle translates as "Go, make your vows. And what you promised, fulfill it immediately. Do not be of two minds, because God is merciful. It is he who will bring about your request for you and do away with the affliction in your heart." Credit: Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Mrs. Beatrice Kelekian in memory of her husband, Charles Dikran Kelekian, 1984.669

MASSACHUSETTS---A 1,500-year-old book that contains a previously unknown gospel has been deciphered. Written in Coptic, an Egyptian language, the opening reads (in translation): "The Gospel of the lots of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, she to whom Gabriel the Archangel brought the good news. He who will go forward with his whole heart will obtain what he seeks. Only do not be of two minds." In the ancient world, a special type of book, sometimes called a "lot book," was used to try to predict a person's future. Luijendijk says that this is the only lot book found so far that calls itself a "gospel" — a word that literally means "good news." The text is now owned by Harvard University's Sackler Museum. [link]

Same-Sex Interfaith Couples Face Roadblock to Marriage in Judaism

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Mark Oppenheimer

MASSACHUSETTS---Ms. Spiegelman grew up attending a Reform synagogue in Andover, Mass., and Ms. Donnelly was raised a Roman Catholic. The two women attend Jewish and Catholic services together, and they had hoped to find marriage officiants from both religions, which they did not think would be difficult. Most non-Orthodox rabbis officiate same-sex weddings, and while they could not expect to find a Catholic priest to officiate, they planned to ask a layperson from Dignity/Boston, a community of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics, to take part. But the rabbi told them that she could not perform the wedding. The problem was not that Ms. Spiegelman wanted to marry a woman — it was that she wanted to marry a non-Jewish woman. [link]

Gay Couple's Japanese Religious Art Entrusted to MFA, Harvard

THE BOSTON GLOBE
By Sebastian Smee

A 13th-century hanging scroll is among the pair’s promised gifts to the MFA.

MASSACHUSETTS---About nine months ago, Sylvan Barnet, 88, a professor emeritus of English literature at Tufts University, was told that he had brain cancer. The doctors said that he had between six months and a year to live. His partner, William Burto — a retired chair of the English department at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell — died in 2013, aged 92, after four years of illness. Burto and Barnet met in graduate school at Harvard University in 1951. Together over the course of half a century, as they taught English, wrote textbooks, and lived in a small house in Cambridge with a third professor, the two men quietly amassed one of the finest private collections of Japanese calligraphy and religious art outside of Japan. [link]

A Shaker Village Finds Enterprise Is Not So Simple

THE NEW YORK TIMES

By Brian Schaefer

Shaker oval boxes and furniture have been the sect’s cultural calling card. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times

MASSACHUSETTS---Ms. Steigleder believes that, more than ever, the Shakers have something to share with society. In the two years since Ms. Steigleder’s arrival, Hancock Shaker Village, on a bare-bones budget, has returned to operating in the black. The days of deficit spending are over, Ms. Steigleder said, and there is a sense of cautious optimism about the future. Several other small but notable developments feed the sense of a resurging interest in the Shakers: a new exhibition at the New York State Museum in Albany (through March 6, 2016); a show at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Me. (through March 8); a glossy book, “The Shakers: From Mount Lebanon to the World” (Rizzoli); and a well-received production by the Wooster Group, “Early Shaker Spirituals,” that returns to New York in April. [link]

For Bühler-Rose, a Boston Gallery is a Hindu Temple at Carroll and Sons

THE BOSTON GLOBE
By Cate McQuaid

Michael Bühler-Rose’s “Kumkumam & Turmeric.”

MASSACHUSETTS---An altar sits in the center of Michael Bühler-Rose’s exhibition at Carroll and Sons. It’s not mentioned on the title list. Perhaps it’s not art at all. Bühler-Rose, a conceptual artist and a Hindu priest, explores the territory between art and religion. He makes the gallery his temple, threading his installation with religious import. He has lined the walls with indigo-striped fabric, a reference to stripes on the outsides of temples in South India. His lushly colored photographs portray elements of Hindu rituals. Both art and religion address the intangible; both are means of dealing with life’s difficulties. Both can be transcendent. Bühler-Rose’s work embraces all that, but he also cleverly prods at some of the great gulfs between the two. [link]

The Rise of University Art Museums

BOSTON REVIEW
By Alana Shilling-Janoff

MASSACHUSETTS---At the beginning of the twentieth century, museums were considered august guardians of cultural wealth. By the late 1960s the association between culture and wealth remained intact, though the terms had changed: culture was no longer just a kind of metaphorical wealth; it was a way of procuring the real thing. Over the last fifty years, museums have become even more entangled in consumerism. There is, moreover, hope elsewhere. Another kind of museum offers the public what commercialized counterparts might—and often more cheaply and effectively. Ironically these museums are sheltered under the aegis of institutions perceived as so exclusionary that they are collectively labeled the “ivory tower,” a synecdoche that suggests an improbable wedding of spun-sugar fantasy and contemptuous anti-intellectualism. [link]

Holy Cross Show Documents Italian Nativity Art

THE BOSTON GLOBE
By Mark Feeney

Margot Balboni’s “Piazza San Pietro” at Cantor Art Gallery.

MASSACHUSETTS---The most unusual area art show of 2014 is “Goya: Order and Disorder,” at the Museum of Fine Arts. It’s unusual because that degree of quality is so uncommon. “The Italian Presepe: Cultural Landscapes of the Soul” may be the second most unusual — unusual because of its subject matter and the imaginatively varied way the exhibition gets at it. The show runs through Dec. 17 at the College of the Holy Cross’s Cantor Art Gallery. A presepe is a nativity scene. [link]

Theatre Review: Engrossing Clash of Opposites in SpeakEasy’s ‘Bad Jews’

BOSTON GLOBE
By Don Aucoin

From left: Gillian Mariner Gordon, Victor Shopov,
Alex Marz, and Alison McCartan in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s “Bad Jews.”

MASSACHUSETTS---Families can weaponize your secrets, turn a searchlight on your flaws, and home in on your contradictions like a GPS whose coordinates are always set to one destination: your Achilles heel. That fundamental truth adds the crackle of electricity to Joshua Harmon’s “Bad Jews,’’ now receiving its New England premiere at SpeakEasy Stage Company in a searingly funny production directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Will it make us laugh? Or wince? Or, as is often the case in this mordantly entertaining and occasionally moving production, both? [link]

Testa Science Center's Stained Glass Are Christian Praiseworthy

LA PROVOCATUER
By Haley Chappell

The original windows, crafted in Paris by artist Raphael Lardeur,
were placed in the original Campus in Christ the King Chapel at Greendale.

MASSACHUSETTS---Testa Science Center is a major feature on the Assumption College Campus, being one of the newest and most up-to-date buildings at the College. Recently, there was a new addition to Testa that really added some necessary color to the white building, and that is the stained glass. Many students were confused as to why these windows were put in and from where they came. Science and religion do not necessarily clash. Many religious figures have scientific backgrounds and a lot of scientists identify with a religion. Whether or not students are religious, they can all appreciate a little color in the atrium while trudging off to the next lab. [link]

Goya: Order and Disorder in Pictures – Waking Dreams of Heaven and Earth

THE GUARDIAN

"Last Communion of Saint Joseph of Calasanz" (1819); Photograph: Erich Lessing Culture & Fine Arts Archive

MASSACHUSETTS---One of the titans of European art, Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) witnessed a time of revolution and sweeping change in thought and behaviour. As 18th-century culture gave way to the modern era, Goya sought new means to capture human experience, in a dizzying blend of spirituality and reason. A major exhibition of the Spanish master, "Goya: Order and Disorder" opens 12 October – 19 January 2015 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. [link]

Yiddish Book Center hosts 'outsider art' exhibit

MERCED SUN-STAR
By Steve Pfarrer

MASSACHUSETTS---The French call it "art brut," which translates as "raw art" or "rough art." The English equivalent is "outsider art" — artwork that's made outside the conventions of the academy, often by people with little or no formal training. Nathan Hilu certainly meets the latter definition. Selected parts of that work are now on display through September at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst in "Nathan Hilu's Journals: Word, Image, Memory." It's a wild kaleidoscope that merges memory, history, biblical stories and perhaps the artist's own fantasies. Synagogues, famous religious figures, Nazi prisoners of war (Hilu once was a guard at the Nuremberg Trials), Lower East Side delis — they all have their place in Hilu's universe. [link]

Art Review: Jim Hodges at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

"When I Believed, What I Believed" (center, and, from left, "Movements (Stage I), "Movements (Stage II)," and "Movements (Variations III)," by Jim Hodges  

MASSACHUSETTS---In the 21st century, we tend to talk about new art in terms of medium and style: Performance is back, painting is back, Pop is back, and so on. But for roughly a decade, from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, the emphasis was on ideas and emotions. Even spirituality, which the New York art world handles with tongs, became an admissible subject. Jim Hodges’s career as an artist began in that in-extremis time. Mr. Hodges was shaped by it and helped shape the art that came out of it. Gay, raised Roman Catholic, living in the AIDS war zone that was New York City, he favored craft-based forms, ephemeral and found materials, and images — flowers, butterflies — traditionally associated with mortality and transience. You’ll find all of this in “Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take,” a taut career survey at the Institute of Contemporary Art here. [link]

Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston: "Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take" (Ends September 1, 2014); 100 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA; (617) 478-3100; icaboston.org

The Clark Art Institute Gets Ancient Ritual Bronzes

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Lee Lawrence

Container for Cowrie Shells with Seven Yaks on Lid. Dian culture, 2nd–1st century BCE. Shanghai Museum, 79112

MASSACHUSETTS---When the Clark Art Institute showcased ancient Chinese artifacts and sculptures in 2012, it brought attention to a little-known facet of its founder: About a decade before he and wife, Francine, began collecting European and American art, Sterling Clark trekked through northwest China at the head of a scientific expedition. Last year, a selection of the institute's Impressionist paintings went on view at the Shanghai Museum. Now, more than 30 works from Shanghai's prized collection have come to the Clark in "Cast for Eternity: Ancient Ritual Bronzes From the Shanghai Museum."[link]

The Clark Art Insitute: "Cast for Eternity: Ancient Ritual Bronzes From the Shanghai Museum," (Ends September 21, 2014); 225 South Street; Williamstown, MA; (413) 458-2303; clarkart.edu

Ancient Ritual Bronzes Grace a Museum Reopening in Massachusetts

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Randy Kennedy

An ancient container for cowrie shells with yaks sculpted on the lid,
in “Cast for Eternity” at the Clark Institute. Credit Shanghai Museum

MASSACHUSETTS---The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, which recently completed a 12-year, $145 million expansion project including new buildings by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando and renovations by the German-born architect Annabelle Selldorf, has reopened its doors in Williamstown, Mass., just in time for the great summer exodus of urban art pilgrims. “Cast for Eternity: Ancient Ritual Bronzes From the Shanghai Museum,” continuing through Sept. 21, features 32 elaborately decorated vessels and bells from China’s Bronze Age, the first of a series of exchanges between the Clark and the Shanghai institution. [link]

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute: "Cast for Eternity: Ancient Ritual Bronzes From the Shanghai Museum," (Ends September 21); 225 South Street Williamstown, Massachusetts; (413) 458-2303; clarkart.edu

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Transfers Eight Illicitly Trafficked Antiquities to Nigeria

ARTDAILY

Head, Nok peoples. African, Nok peoples, Nigeria, About 500 BC–200 AD. Ceramic; terracotta.

MASSACHUSETTS---The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has reached an agreement with the National Commission of Museums and Monuments, Nigeria (NCMM), transferring to the Commission eight antiquities of Nigerian origin that are believed to have been the subject of illicit trafficking. The antiquities include two Nok terracotta figures and a terracotta Ife head, archaeological materials that are known to be at high risk for theft and looting. The group also includes an ekpu, or ancestral figure dating to the 18th or 19th century, which was part of the collection of the Oron Museum, near Calabar, Nigeria, as late as the 1970s; and a bronze altar figure of about 1914, which was likely stolen from the Royal Palace in Benin City in 1976. [link]

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Returns Art Works to Nigeria

ARTBEAT | NYTIMES
By Tom Mashberg

MASSACHUSETTS---The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has returned eight works of art to Nigeria after determining that the documentation accompanying some of the items, six of which were bequeathed in early 2013 by a prominent donor and collector, was suspect or fraudulent. The repatriated antiquities include two Nok terracotta figures and a terracotta head, items known to be at high risk for theft; a wooden ancestral figure from the 18th or 19th century known as an ekpu, which disappeared from a Nigerian museum in the 1970s; an elaborate bronze altar figure of a warrior from the 1910s, which was likely stolen from the Royal Palace in Benin City in 1976; two terracotta heads from the Kingdom of Benin, and a group of three figures made of wood and fiber known as Kalabari. [link]

Brazilian Artists (Twins) Cover Air Intake Structure With Whimscial Covered Woman in Boston

RADIO BOSTON

Brazil's Os Gêmeos converted structure into whimsical character in Boston

MASSACHUSETTS---Boston’s burgeoning arts scene will get a boost when Mayor Marty Walsh appoints a new cabinet-level Arts and Cultural Affairs Commissioner this summer. Os Gêmeos, two Brazilian twins who are famous for being at the forefront of Brazilian street art, have their first US solo show at the ICA in Boston. As part of the exhibit, they converted an air intake structure into this whimsical and colorful character on the Greenway in Boston, MA. So what should the city’s new Arts Czar do to foster creativity in Boston and make it a more vital city of the arts?  [link]

Samba Spirit at MFA, Boston, With Exhibition of Afro Brazilian Art

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS NEWS
By TAHLIB

Works by 20th-Century Artists from Brazil Debut in New England

MASSACHUSETTS—For the first time in its history, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), presents a selection of works by 20th-century Brazilian artists of mostly African descent in "Samba Spirit: Modern Afro Brazilian Art." The exhibition includes 15 paintings and one work on paper by key artists including Heitor dos Prazeres, Maria Auxiliadoro da Silva and Waldemiro de Deus, as well as two sculptures by Agnaldo Manoel Dos Santos. Rarely studied in the United States, these artists drew on a range of traditions and found inspiration in all aspects of Brazilian culture—religious rituals, urban and rural life, music and dance.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: "Samba Spirit: Modern Afro Brazilian Art" (Ends Oct. 19); Avenue of the Arts | 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA; (617)267-9300; mfa.org