Museum And Gallery

Boston arts institutions flexed their muscles in 2011

Boom town!

By GREG COOK | December 28, 2011

In 2003, when Salem's Peabody Essex Museum opened its new Moshe Safdie–designed wing, it heralded a local museum building boom that corresponded to a national expansion of museum infrastructure. The Museum of Fine Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art, and Addison Gallery have debuted renovations or expansions. Harvard and the Gardner Museum are in the midst of construction. Meanwhile, the museums have recruited curatorial firepower — chief curator Lynda Roscoe Hartigan at the Peabody Essex, Helen Molesworth at the ICA, Dina Deitsch at the deCordova, to name a few. The confluence of additional museum capacity and curatorial vision has come into focus over the past year. The following rundown of the best art exhibits of 2011 shows how greater Boston is now consistently offering some of the richest institutional art exhibition programs in the country. And the Peabody Essex has just announced another expansion.

GIRLS AND BOYS
Outgoing MFA curator George Shackelford once again demonstrated what that museum does best: big, beautiful blockbuster historical shows. His "Degas and the Nude" (through February 5) surveys the Impressionist master's tender, intimate observations of naked ladies unselfconsciously stepping out of tubs and toweling off. The show also paused to consider the MFA's newly acquired Gustave Caillebotte's painting of a muscular nude dude toweling off (for which the MFA sold off eight paintings, including a Monet). Along with the luscious marble hermaphrodite at the heart of the MFA's "Aphrodite and the Gods of Love," it was a year when the venerable institution began to show its queer pride.

READ MORE: " 'Degas and the Nude' at MFA," by Greg Cook

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | next >

Fresh fruit and vegetables
The bleakest months of New England winter are ahead of us, so the prospect of leaving your toasty house to see art may not be at the top of your to-do list.
States of the art
In New England, where you can't swing a sack of cranberries without hitting a venerable cultural institution, anyone with access to a car (or even a subway pass) can scope out these topnotch art museums.
Art in the air conditioning
From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.
More

Fresh fruit and vegetables
The bleakest months of New England winter are ahead of us, so the prospect of leaving your toasty house to see art may not be at the top of your to-do list.
States of the art
In New England, where you can't swing a sack of cranberries without hitting a venerable cultural institution, anyone with access to a car (or even a subway pass) can scope out these topnotch art museums.
Art in the air conditioning
From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.
Fall Art Preview: Heavy construction
Over the past decade, museum building has boomed across the region.
Pottery, Potter, mummies, and a 'Rare Bird'
The art of 2000 BC Egypt, visions from the Iraq War and AIDS activism, and the magic of a digital technology and Harry Potter make up the highlights of Boston's autumn art calendar.
10 must-visit New England art exhibits for early 2011
During the icy months of the gray heart of the Boston winter, art offers a chance for you to travel to the balmy South Seas and, via a brainy conceptual artist, the streets of Mexico City. Winter shows also offer a chance to travel through history, from Rembrandt to overlooked women Pop Artists, from early computer art to Edward Gorey's gothic whimsies.
Autumn blossoms: Our 10 most anticipated art shows this fall
This fall is a season of celebrations and new beginnings as the Museum of Fine Arts opens its new contemporary art wing, the Institute of Contemporary Art turns 75, the Addison Gallery reopens after fixing its roof, and Brandeis's Rose Art Museum reopens after a mini renovation and settling a lawsuit by backing off from its threat to close for good.
Portraiture dominates Boston gallery exhibits this spring
"I figured," Alex Katz said of his paintings of his wife Ada in 1969, "well, if I get Ada right, if you only get one person right— if you get a woman or a man right — it's universal."
2009: The year in art
The year started off with a kick in the teeth when, in January, Brandeis University announced plans to shutter its Rose Art Museum and sell off its masterpieces.
Top 10 New England Art Exhibits of 2010
Art – and art spaces — of all sizes
Scavenged sculpture and Dead Sea scrolls: 10 heady spring exhibits blooming in New England galleries
In Barry McGee's art, you'll find traces of influences lifted from thrift stores, tramp art, skating, punk, surfing, and Bay Area murals and psychedelia.
Less

Topics: Museum And Gallery , Institute of Contemporary Art , Museum of Fine Arts , Peabody Essex Museum , More

| More

Featured Articles in Museum And Gallery:

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN | May 13, 2013
What does it mean to be a man? That's the question at the heart of this smart, sumptuous exhibit — one of the best shows in the region this year.

MERRY PRANKSTERS | May 07, 2013
Parked out front of Brown University's gray modernist Granoff Center on a recent sunny morning were one of those 15-foot-tall inflatable rats that unions install in front of businesses they're protesting and a limousine sloppily painted to resemble a yellow and black school bus.

ALTERED IMAGES | April 30, 2013
Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.

IN THE CITY | April 23, 2013
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Providence art scene is how the city itself has been such a rich subject. A decade ago, the city became a galvanizing topic as artists fought to protect the old mills that served as their homes and studios from demolition — with mixed success. But lately, the community's industrial architecture itself has attracted artists' attention.

THE AFTERMATH OF ATROCITY | April 16, 2013
From the ruins of the Iraq war emerges Wafaa Bilal's "The Ashes Series" and Daniel Heyman's "I Am Sorry It Is So Difficult To Start," on view at Brown University's Bell Gallery.