Sure,
boston boasts great art from all periods of
history— just check out the outstanding
ancient Egyptian collection at the Museum of
Fine Arts or the rare Renaissance and
Baroque treasures housed at the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum. But where can one
find funky modern art—that is, anything
created from the late 19th century on,
beginning with the Impressionist movement—or
cutting-edge contemporary art from the last
50 years of the post- modern canon? For
those with avant-garde tastes, here’s a
handy guide to where the black
beret-and-turtleneck-wearing crowd
congregates in Beantown.
Museums, great and small
The aforementioned
Museum of Fine Arts may be an
encyclopedic institution, containing art
from the ancient world up through today, but
it is only in recent years that it has
gained a reputation for championing the
latest generation of contemporary artists.
For evidence of this, look no further than
the eye-popping installation by Scottish
artist Jim Lambie temporarily gracing the
hallway of the museum’s west wing. Add to
this the MFA’s renowned collections of
French Impressionist paintings and works by
American and European modern masters, and
you have a hotspot where even the local
tattooed and pierced art students wouldn’t
mind being seen.
Of course, the latest art star on the scene is the shiny new home of the Institute of Contemporary Art on the South Boston waterfront. Little more than a year old, the Diller + Scofidio-designed building has itself become as much an attraction as the ICA’s new permanent collection and its ever-rotating displays of provocative, groundbreaking works of art, which currently includes the show The World as a Stage, a collection of video art, installations and other interactive pieces organized by the Tate Modern in London.
new Expo on the Block
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Boston is not the only place to find cool new works. Travel on Route 2 towards the western suburbs and you’ll find the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, a bastion of contemporary New England art. The unique-to-the-region sculpture park attracts visitors year-round with its eclectic collection, including such notable entries as Gail Simpson’s and Aristotle Georgiades’ Trojan Piggybank, Jim
Dine’s Two Big Black Hearts and Nina Levy’s whimsical Big Baby, a giant fiberglass model of a diaper-clad infant. The museum itself is currently exhibiting the temporary shows Presumed Innocence: Photographic Perspectives of Children and Photographs of Children from the DeCordova Permanent Collection, which both highlight photography of children from the 20th and 21st centuries. Refer to museums listings.
In the Galleries
The best way to combine a museum
experience with a shopping excursion is by
visiting some of Boston’s myriad art
galleries. And there’s probably no better
area to do this than on famed
Newbury Street. Not only is it known
for its high-end shopping, but it is chock
full of excellent art spaces, many of which
showcase modern and contemporary art and
design. Long-time purveyors include Pucker
Gallery, which debuts new paintings of
Israel by Jeffrey Hessing on April 5;
International Poster Gallery, which
currently features the show Rare Modernist
Posters; and the gallery at the Society of
Arts and Crafts, which highlights the latest
in the decorative arts (refer to
galleries listings). Also, be sure to
check out the current show Kinesthetics:
Modernist Design 1925–2000 at McCormick
Gallery at Boston Architectural College (320
Newbury St., 617-262-5000), which runs in
conjunction with the AD 20/21 art expo in
the South End (see sidebar, left).
Speaking of the South End, this artsy area is home to some of the best galleries in the city for new works, including the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, Bromfield Art Gallery and Boston Sculptors Gallery (refer to galleries listings), as well as such cutting-edge up-and-comers as Space 242 (242 E. Berkeley Street, 2nd floor) and Pinkcomma Gallery (81B Wareham St., 617-426-4466).
On Campus
It makes sense that America’s
biggest college town would have many centers
of higher learning that are also hotbeds of
creativity. Notable campus institutions that
feature modern art include the
MIT List Visual Arts Center
in Cambridge and Brandeis University’s
Rose Art Museum (refer
to
museums listings), as well as Harvard
University’s Carpenter Center
for the Visual Arts (24 Quincy St.,
Cambridge, 617-495-3251). Many area schools
are also home to galleries that often
feature the next generation of art stars,
including the School of the Museum of Fine
Arts’ Grossman Gallery (230 The Fenway,
617-369-3718), the Trustman Art Gallery at
Simmons College (300 The Fenway,
617-521-2268) and Massachusetts College of
Art’s Bakalar and Paine galleries (621
Huntington Ave., 617-879-7333).
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