Visual Arts
Dispatches from the Triennial: Downtown Crossing
Over the next few months while the Boston Public Art Triennial is on view, WBUR's Amelia Mason will travel to each installation and release occasional dispatches of her impressions. First...
Stephen Hamilton intertwines ancestry and artistry for the Triennial
Boston-based artist Stephen Hamilton explores Black craft, labor, and ancestral traditions in his installation “Under the Spider’s Web,” featured in the city’s inaugural Public Art Triennial. Using weaving, painting, and...
Summer in New England, blending art and nature
The mixture of outdoors and art is one of the reasons why New England is so wonderful in the summer. We have suggestions of ways to get outside and experience...
MFA returns two stolen works from Benin Kingdom
At a ceremony Friday in New York City, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts returned two works of art that were stolen from present-day Nigeria more than a century ago. They...
15 art exhibits to explore this summer
This season's visual art exhibitions highlight memory and resilience, from an immersive installation examining home at the ICA Watershed to a display of Ukrainian folk art at Fuller Craft Museum.
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Warren, Markey call for answers on federal funding cuts to Mass. museums and libraries
The senators request further information on the future of certain programs and the Institute of Museum and Library Services' plan to act in accordance with laws that require minimum funding...
What is the point of public art?
Ahead of the "Art in Public" panel at The WBUR Festival, WBUR Senior Arts & Culture Reporter Amelia Mason thinks about the role of art in communal spaces.
An art exhibit honors the historical Black community of Walden Woods
Before Thoreau's "life in the woods," there was Brister Freeman, a formerly enslaved man who won his freedom serving in the Revolutionary War. Freeman and the Brister's Hill community serve...
Remembering artist Rob Stull, whose work spanned canvases and comics
Stull was an artist, mentor, teacher and cultural legend in Boston and beyond. His work as a leading Black artist in comic books was internationally recognized. Stull passed away on...
A new Triennial wants to make Boston a public art city
The event kicks off this week with 20 site-specific commissions from artists all over the world — and notably for a public art festival, there will be no murals.
'Waters of the Abyss' at the Gardner makes alchemy with paper
Haitian artist Fabiola Jean-Louis worked for more than two years to create a massive series of 40 artworks on view at the museum. She fused newspaper, tons of clay, shells,...
Lupe Fiasco's latest hip-hop collaborator? MIT
The Grammy winning musician has composed songs inspired by MIT’s collection of public art.
Art at South Station, hidden in plain sight
The train station is home to a work of art that thousands of people pass each day without looking up.
At the MFA, Van Gogh's portraits reveal his capacity for friendship
At the heart of this show are 14 of the 26 portraits Van Gogh made of Joseph Roulin and his family, along with works by artists the painter admired, photos,...
In Dorchester, Vietnamese-Americans mark 50 years after the fall of Saigon
The end of the war in Vietnam scattered Vietnamese refugees across the globe. Dorchester is home to three-quarters of Massachusetts' Vietnamese-American population. This week, hundreds gathered to mark the anniversary...
Gloucester gallery opens to cement Jon Sarkin's artistic legacy
When Sarkin was 35 he suffered a massive stroke. He emerged with an insatiable urge to make art, but he struggled to break into the mainstream. He died last year...
Artist Jon Sarkin and the question of 'good' art
After encountering the work of this "outsider artist," WBUR senior reporter Amelia Mason considered how we decide what art is "good" and whether those metrics matter.
MFA will shutter gallery of Benin bronze sculptures
The collection of bronze and ivory masterpieces will be returned to collector Robert Owen Lehman. He had lent the objects to the MFA in 2012 and “pledged to give them...
Worcester Art Museum announces opening date of new arms and armor galleries
The galleries will open to the public on Nov. 22 after more than a decade of planning, fundraising and construction. The newly designed, 5,000-square-foot space will display over 1,000 objects,...
Watertown archive marks 50 years of preserving Armenia diaspora photos
Ruth Thomasian has collected and preserved more than 100,000 photographs documenting the local, regional and global Armenian experience.