On a late summer morning, James Baldwin was waiting for the Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists to begin at the Sorbonne.
Read articleJames Baldwin wrestles with what it means to be American
Karen Thorsen screens “James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket” at Mass MoCA in the summer-long Lift Ev’ry Voice festival of African American arts and culture across the Berkshires.
Read articleOutdoor sculpture at Art OMI
On an August afternoon I wandered one afternoon through the Field Sculpture Park at ArtOMI — the OMI International Arts Center in Ghent, N.Y.
Read articleSeeing Norman Rockwell’s artwork through a journalist’s eyes — BTW column
Imagine what it would be like if newspapers today commissioned paintings to run on their color pages? This weekend, I became a tourist. My parents came up to see me. In between crossword puzzles at my kitchen table and Malaysian fried rice at Flavors Restaurant, we took some time to do some things […]
Read articleWhere’s Whistler as a boy in Northeast Connecticut?
When James Whistler was larking about town with a sketch pad, drawing caricatures, sketching a fire in the rectory roof, skating and coasting with friends, where did the Whistlers live in Pomfret, Conn.?
Read articleRevealing the woman behind ‘Whistler’s Mother’
‘Whistler’s Mother’ has become one of the most recognized paintings ever made. But few people know the woman in it. Looking at the elderly figure in her black dress, how many people see a young woman helping her doctor father in his lab in New York — or a young mother holding her dying 2-year-old son on a ship to Russia?
Read articleJames McNeill Whistler and his mother reunite in the Berkshires
Whistler’s Mother has come to visit. Rembrandt-like, her face shines clear against a dark and grey background, said Jay A. Clarke, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Clark Art Institute.
Read articleTwisted Pine plays FreshGrass
In the expanding Boston bluegrass scene, the band Twisted Pine feels an energy in its free-shifting improvisation — like Irish music and jazz combined.
Read articleFreshGrass impressions in early fall
Any day that begins with Sandy Boys played fast under the upside down trees and ends with an actor and a musician invoking the entire force of the people of Troy … is a good day.
Read articlePoets invoke connection in ghosts, candles and skin
This is a good week for poetry. Thomas Sayers Ellis, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Larry Raab … we have voices reading up and down the hills.
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