February 5th, 2025 | General, History, Politics, visual arts
Back in the late nineteen-sixties, I clipped a cartoon from The New Yorker, at a time that urban renewal was doing its worst in a variety of Boston neighborhoods. The picture was a pair of little old ladies sitting on a train, one speaking to the other. The caption...
December 1st, 2024 | Changes, Friends, General, Loss, Memory, visual arts
Obituaries mark with increasing insistence the evanescence of my own memories. A notice reminds me of this musician or that scholar or politician or athlete. On Friday, November 29, 2024, the day after Thanksgiving, it was the loss of the great photographer, Paul...
November 24th, 2024 | Architecture and Design, General, visual arts
I am good—pretty good—at keeping my hands in my pockets or clasped behind my back while in an art museum. Rules keep the art safe. Even so, between my poor eyesight and exuberance in the presence of objects of wonder, I have driven a number of guards on two continents...
January 6th, 2024 | Architecture and Design, General, Memory, Travel, United States, visual arts
A fine January 5th, cold, a little windy, just what I would expect in Boston. I had an appointment with Adam at The Charles Realty scheduled for eleven o’clock. Otherwise my day was my own. Old South Old South Church is only a couple doors down from the hotel, on the...
June 28th, 2023 | Architecture and Design, Education, General, visual arts
Marcia Gayle Snee is a wonderful artist and dear friend, so when she said her work had been accepted into a juried exhibition at Harford Community College’s Chesapeake Gallery, I was thrilled for her. Curious, also, about just what might be in the exhibition....
March 25th, 2023 | Education, General, visual arts
One pleasant morning, in the late 1980s, I started my work as the Education Curator at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa. The phone rang; it appeared we had a problem with an upcoming tour of elementary school children who were also scheduled for a studio-art...