Textiles 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
By RANDI HOPKINS | December 11, 2007
|
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
Related:
Wanting more, Now on tape, Apocalypse now, More 
- Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
- Now on tape
Spending a rainy Saturday night curled up in front of Dodgeball or the first season of Six Feet Under is great and all, but what if you want to find Michael Auder’s “Polaroid Cocaine,” a five-minute, 1993 video montage of images that “dwell on the themes of death, destruction, and desire,” accompanied by cabaret music?
- Apocalypse now
Empyrean is one of the rare Internet-inspired pieces with rich, complex, coherent form.
- Sketchy
Art — like music, physics, literature, dance, and other creative pursuits — rarely springs forth from the imagination in its final form.
- Tormenting Teddy
After 32 years in the US Senate, Ted Kennedy remains a force to be reckoned with, both for his legendary family history and his considerable accomplishments.
- Touch the sky
The term “polyptych” usually refers to the multi-panel paintings designed as altarpieces for churches and cathedrals in Gothic and Renaissance Europe.
- Lighting up
Poor Abraham Lincoln.
- Dancing in a new direction
The 100th birthday of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes prompted the expected centennial tributes in Boston: a "Diaghilev's Ballets Russes 1909–1929: Twenty Years That Changed the World of Art" symposium and exhibition at Harvard University in April, and a "Ballets Russes 2009" festival this month.
- Diaghilev days
The Ballets Russes come to town
- Erwartung . . .
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA music director James Levine will be back in February to continue his survey of Beethoven and Schoenberg with Metropolitan Opera diva Deborah Voigt in Beethoven’s “Ah! perfido” and Schoenberg’s Erwartung (“Awaiting”), along with Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Eighth Symphony (Symphony Hall, February 1-3).
- Flashbacks: June 23, 2006
These selections, culled from our back files, were compiled by Doug Fleischer, Sam MacLaughlin, and Hannah Van-Susteren.
- New blood
The famously adventurous American Repertory Theatre is soon to be taken over by a woman who spent her summer directing . . . the vintage Broadway hits Kiss Me, Kate and Hair ?
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Culture and Lifestyle, Harvard University, Hobbies and Pastimes, More
, Culture and Lifestyle, Harvard University, Hobbies and Pastimes, Boston University, Visual Arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Sculpture, Arts and Crafts, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard's Busch-Reisinger Museum, Less
