KraftwerkTextiles from the Wiener Werkstätte at the Busch-Reisinger, Solstice Soirée at the Gardner, Faculty Exhibition at BU, and Holiday Sale at Harvard’s Ceramics Studio December 11,
2007 5:45:01 PM
Josef Hoffmann, Crane Fly
|
The same early-20th-century Vienna that eventually produced Freud, Schoenberg, and Wittgenstein was also the site of a renaissance in arts and crafts — the likes of Josef Hofmann and Gustav Klimt inspired artisans to bring more-abstract art and purer forms to the design of buildings and furniture, glass, and metalwork. Artists involved with the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), which was founded in 1903 by Hoffmann and artist Koloman Moser, developed a distinctive modern style characterized by simple shapes, minimal decoration, and geometric patterning. The fabrics and designs of the Weiner Werkstätte’s groundbreaking textile department are the subject of a free discussion — part of the “Close-Up: Study Room Collections” series — at Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum on December 15. In an hour-long seminar, “DESIGNED FOR THE 20TH CENTURY: WIENER WERKSTÄTTE COSTUME AND TEXTILES,” curatorial fellow Heather Hess will examine the intersection of design and society through examples of fashion and textile designs.
|
“Wiener Werkstätte Costume and Textiles” at Busch-Reisinger Museum, 32 Quincy St, Cambridge | December 15: 11:30 am–12:30 pm | 617.495.9400 | “Gardner After Hours” at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 the Fenway, Boston | December 20: 5-9 pm | non-members $12; college students $5 | 617.566.1401 | “Boston University Faculty Exhibition 2007” at 808 Gallery, 808 Comm Ave, Boston | through January 6 | 617.358.0922 | “Holiday Show & Sale” at Harvard’s Ceramics Program Studio, 219 Western Avenue, Boston | December 14-16 | 617.495.8680
|
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a great place to linger at any time of day, but there’s something magical about being there at night. Recently the Gardner has been opening its palatial doors to the public on the third Thursday evening of each month for “GARDNER AFTER HOURS,” with live music and cocktails in the courtyard. This month’s party, on December 20, is called “A Solstice Soirée,” and in addition to festive music and drinks, visitors can view Cliff Evans’s five-channel video installation Empyrean in the first-floor special-exhibitions gallery and enjoy a conversation between Evans and Boston Cyberarts founder and director George Fifield.
The vast expanse of space that is 808 Gallery is given over to a special, once-every-three-years event this season with the “BOSTON UNIVERSITY FACULTY EXHIBITION 2007,” which, on view through January 6, offers work by 25 artists who teach at BU, among them sculptors Sachiko Akiyama and Eamon Brown and painters Dana Clancy and Harold Reddicliffe.
Holiday craft sales — an entertaining way to shop — are in full swing, with their unexpected treasures, their amusing and/or unidentifiable clunkers, and, if you’re lucky, just the right thing for Mr. or Ms. X. Harvard’s Ceramics Program (on Western Avenue) brings us the “HOLIDAY SHOW & SALE” December 14-16 — handmade work by more than 50 potters and sculptors associated with the program, which offers courses and workshops to the Boston community throughout the year.
On the Web
Busch-Reisinger Museum: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: www.isgm.org
808 Gallery: www.bu.edu/cfa
Harvard’s Ceramics Program Studio: www.fas.harvard.edu/ceramics
|
 |
Vote now in over 100 categories including the best local restaurants, comedian, filmmaker, performance artist, and yoga studio
Vote now in over 100 categories including the best local jukebox, bartender, dance club, and tattoo shop
Vote now in over 100 categories including best beer selection, bike route, gallery, and movie house
|
- Fans are paying the price for the Sox success: inside the Fenway fiasco
- The soap-operatic significance of the Bay Guardian–Village Voice Media battle
- Some Things at Trinity
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- The Big Hurt: Trent Reznor pushes the premium fabric-bound envelope
- The first political leader of my generation acts nothing like the rest of us — which might be how he’s gotten where he is
- Fans are paying the price for the Sox success: inside the Fenway fiasco
- Meet Adam Gaffin, Boston’s reigning Web czar
- The Clean House at New Rep; Gary at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
- The soap-operatic significance of the Bay Guardian–Village Voice Media battle
- Teatro Lirico I at the Majestic Theatre, March 2, 2008
- The first political leader of my generation acts nothing like the rest of us — which might be how he’s gotten where he is
|
-
Spring Arts Preview: Landscape, road trips, weddings, and Spain
-
Monumental Prints and Small Ponds at the Davis Museum, ‘Art and Math’ at Axiom, Glass Sea Creatures at Harvard, and New Rationalists at Proof
-
‘Impermanence’ at the Essex Art Center, ‘Two Chinas’ at WAM, Renée Green at the Carpenter Center, and Feminism at the MFA
-
Moyra Davey at the Fogg, ‘Two or Three Things I Know about Her’ at the Carpenter Center, and Arno Rafael Minkkinen at BU
-
‘Maori Tattoo’ at the Peabody Essex, Jim Henderson and Ann Torke at Boston Sculptors, and Student Shows at the MFA and SMFA
-
David Claerbout at MIT, Children at the DeCordova, Kabuki Theater at the Peabody Essex, and more
-
‘The World as a Stage’ at the ICA, ‘British Prints 1914–1939’ and ‘Traveling Scholars’ at the MFA, and Colombian Artists at GASP
-
‘Broken Home: 1997/2007,’ ‘Empires and Environments,’ and ‘Arp to Reinhardt’ at the Rose, ‘Selections ’08’ at Mass Art, and Liz Linder at Space 242
-
‘Branded and On Display’ and Iván Navarro at Tufts, David Ording and Ledelle Moe at BU
-
Corn Dogs + Blue Ribbons at Montserrat, Boston Does Boston at Proof, and Some Sort of Uncertainty at Axiom
|
- John Whalley's "Mementos" at Greenhut Galleries
- Taking stock of the war in Iraq
- Monumental Prints and Small Ponds at the Davis Museum, ‘Art and Math’ at Axiom, Glass Sea Creatures at Harvard, and New Rationalists at Proof
- A look at the newly re-opened Bowdoin College Museum of Art
- Global warming inspires eco art at Montserrat and the BCA
- Three approaches to photography at Whitney Art Works
- ‘War Stories’ and Maori tattoos, plus the SMFA’s ‘Traveling Scholars’
- Jared Radding at the new Franklin Street Art Space
- Moyra Davey at the Fogg, ‘Two or Three Things I Know about Her’ at the Carpenter Center, and Arno Rafael Minkkinen at BU
- Commemorating the Katahdin Lake purchase
|
|