Arts Reporter
Andrea Shea is a long-time reporter working for WBUR. She started working for WBUR on Here & Now and now works as the arts reporter on Morning Edition.
BOSTON — A rare convergence is happening in Boston. Right now, three major art museums are undergoing major expansion projects. And all of them — the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Harvard Art Museum — are going “green.” But not without trepidation.
BOSTON — New England’s largest opera company is trying something new. The Boston Lyric Opera is taking a production out of the theater and into The Castle, an historic landmark in Boston’s Back Bay. “Turn of the Screw” opens there Wednesday night.
BOSTON — The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston has announced nine finalists for its 2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize, the ICA’s biennial award for Boston-area artists.
BOSTON — As if the $118 million price tag isn’t enough to convince one that the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is serious about its expansion project, rock star architect Renzo Piano flew in from Italy to attend Thursday’s unveiling of the design plans.
BOSTON — The Boston Symphony Orchestra is confirming Maestro James Levine’s return to the podium next Thursday, after a three-month absence.
BOSTON — On this day, 201 years ago, gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe was born. The master of the macabre came into this world right here in Boston. But, as legend has it, Poe hated his home town — and Boston hated Poe right back.
BOSTON — On Sunday, Maestro Courtney Lewis, 25, takes his ambitious mission to the podium: bringing classical music to inner-city school children.
The American Repertory Theater is hosting an experiment in Cambridge called “Gatz,” an unedited staging of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s entire famous novel. Word-for-word, cover-to-cover, the production clocks in at six-and-a-half hours. So what better test for this production than dragging someone along who worships the book but has an aversion to theater?
BOSTON — A new report says tax credits for the film industry are costly and fail to live up to their promises.
BOSTON — The MFA said it will not “comment on works that the museum may be studying or considering for acquisition.” Even so, just the idea of a da Vinci in Boston is generating chatter.
The 74-year-old former longtime director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced that he will cancel about 30 concerts over the next six months to focus on treatment.
BOSTON — The Boston Pops breaks tradition by going punk at its annual New Year’s Eve concert. Punk cabaret singer Amanda Palmer will share the stage with the orchestra and conductor Keith Lockhart.
BOSTON — There’s a sense in this economy that many of us are getting in touch with the spirit of Bob Cratchit, Charles Dickens’ struggling but admirable everyman in “A Christmas Carol.” But is striving to be like Cratchit really such a good idea?
BOSTON — The 46-year-old organization says it’s seeing the highest gross numbers for The Nutcracker in at least five years.
BOSTON — Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia. All three cities claim to deserve the biggest piece of Edgar Allan Poe’s notorious legacy. On Thursday night, the Boston Public Library becomes the scene of a brawl — to determine who gets bragging rights over the master of the macabre.
WEYMOUTH, Mass. — The promise of transforming Massachusetts into “Hollywood East” has been in the spotlight for years. Just recently Plymouth Rock Studios — one of at least three film studios proposed for the state — suffered a major financial setback, calling into question the idea of what it actually means to be “Hollywood East,” and whether it makes sense to have film studios here at all.
BOSTON — Boston’s Bang Camaro has two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer — and between 10 and 20 lead male singers. That’s a lot of testosterone. The massive rock band’s live shows are the stuff of legend, but getting the band together is not easy.
BOSTON — Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theatre is honoring filmmaker Jonathan Demme for embodying the spirit of challenging cinema.
BOSTON — While the Boston Symphony Orchestra has been tapped in the past, on Thursday the organization got its breakthrough nod for an orchestral recording that it produced completely in-house, without a record label.
BOSTON — Fare hikes are not unique to contemporary rail riders. Folklorist Bess Lomax Hawes, who died this week at 88, spoke to the frustrations of money-conscious commuters back in the ’40s with the now-legendary song “Charlie on the MTA.”
