Next year marks the centennial of the Mexican Revolution. Still, the country seems forever in flux. Two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, present views of Mexico that not only differ from each other, but also from the pictures we’re used to seeing on travel brochures and in magazines.
BOSTON/South End - The Youth Workers’ Alliance of the South End/Lower Roxbury welcomed dozens of students, parents, teachers, youth workers, and other members of the community to their 7th annual Youth Shines! Art Auction on Wednesday in the auditorium of the Ben Franklin Institute of Technology.
Boston Herald editorial cartoonist Jerry Holbert and bestselling author/artist David Macaulay will be special guests when the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, celebrates Family Day from 1-5p.m. on Saturday, May 30.
A guided tour of “The Making of a Book,” the exhibition featuring Macaulay’s work, is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. More than 100 manuscripts, drawings, and such artifacts as the dummies he uses to create his books are on display through June 14.
Call it what you will, a staycation, a mini-vacation, or a day trip, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton is a delightful spring destination. Although barely an hour out of Boston, the museum is situated on twenty-two acres of woodland lining the shores of Potter’s Pond. The setting offers an irresistible invitation for a country walk. More sedentary nature lovers, however, may enjoy the water views and sculpture garden, dining /al fresco/ on the patio. Either brown-bag it or do take-out from the museum’s new café.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is celebrating their 50th anniversary with a unique series of seven performances (that’s 18,000 tickets!) at the Opera House thanks to the Celebrity Series of Boston. Open Media Boston was there on opening night for the Boston premiere of “Go in Grace” (2008), a collaboration with the incomparable African-American women’s a cappella vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock (who themselves are sometimes featured by the Celebrity Series.)
Art is often subversive. Hitler knew it. Stalin knew it. And Mao Zedong knew it. Dictators regard ideas expressed by art for art’s sake as a threat. They use art as propaganda, a tool to glorify the state. They prevent artists who do not hew to the party line from exhibiting their work in public. Some of the groundbreaking Chinese artists who made the works currently on view at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM), Salem, still aren’t allowed to show in their own country.
Students from the Zumix Radio Journalism Group have produced audio reviews of the Prison Break TV show and the Twilight book franchise. Listen to the reviews with the embedded Internet Archive players below, or download the original files in mp3 format directly from the Internet Archive by clicking the links below each player.
I was surprised to find myself at “Defending the Caveman,” – a long-running one-man comedy show written by Rob Becker that brags about looking at relationships between the genders “without taking sides.” Starring Michael Van Osch, who has been doing this since 2004, it is playing at the Wilbur Theatre through March 15. Based, as my companion put it, on “the humor of recognition,” this performance piece claims to be “the longest running solo play in Broadway history,” and has been translated into 16 languages and performed around the world by a variety of comics.
BOSTON/South Boston - Unless you’ve arrived only recently from another planet, you know that Shepard Fairey’s first museum exhibition, a 20-year survey of his images, is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Fairey is the world’s most famous street artist, best known for his iconic red, white and blue “PROGRESS,” “CHANGE,” and “HOPE,” posters of Barack Obama. He made headlines in Boston over the weekend when he was arrested.
BOSTON/South End - Peter Schumann wants to ferment your brain. He’ll provide the vat filled with sourdough bread, garlic, and the crucial ingredients for political transmogrification, including subversion, corruption, and lots of symbolism. When he’s done with your grey matter, he says he’ll give it back.
Actually, Schumann, founder and impresario of the Bread and Puppet Theater, hopes you’ll attend the Sourdough Philosophy Spectacle and Circus, with performances through Sunday, February first at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama in the South End.
