Buyer's market

Boston's hidden art treasures

by Christopher Millis

Boston is to the arts in 1999 what it was to real estate in 1969 -- an undiscovered, remarkable backwater. Thirty years ago, property values in Boston's most central, historic, and architecturally intriguing neighborhoods -- the South End, the Fenway, and Jamaica Plain, to name only three -- enjoyed the cache of ground zero as the banking industry indulged in its last standoff with City Hall. Thirty years later, Boston artists who will be remembered in the century to come for redefining American painting and sculpture -- Paul Rahilly, Janet Monafo, Ken Beck, and Pat Keck, to name only four -- remain relegated to the status of the $19,000 center-city brownstone of yesteryear. On the upside, for those in the know, now's the time to shop.

A variety of shows will be worth seeking out in early '99. "Abelardo Morell and the Camera Eye" opens at the Museum of Fine Arts on February 17. Morell is that rarest of Bostonians, one whom the major institutions have recognized (he was recently artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) while he's still breathing. His large black-and-white photographs range in subject matter from the domestic to the cerebral, from pinhole-camera images of his child's bedroom to wrinkled maps of Europe. Yet uniting his subjects is an approach charged by wit, sympathy, and a masterful technique; he makes you see things differently.

Two other MFA shows of note opening in February are "Traveling Scholars," an annual group show of select Museum School alums and current graduate students, and "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman." Cassatt's exhibit title is only half right, though, so if modernity is what you're after, seek out the sculptures of Jill Slosburg-Ackerman in the "Traveling Scholars" show. Slosburg-Ackerman takes natural hunks of untouched wood and then profoundly and subtly reworks them, as if to convince nature it can be improved. In one piece, she's hollowed out the center of a thick stump and pulverized the shavings to make a mortar that's then applied in lyrical layers to the outside of the wood, resulting in a simultaneous creation and re-creation.

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While a number of shows at the more-traditional nonprofit venues look like they'll be smart and smooth ("Pre-Raphaelites" and "American Art after 1950" both open December 26 at the Fogg Museum, for instance), perhaps the kinkiest show on the horizon comes to Boston College under the name of "Saints and Sinners." "Saints and Sinners" will be like a High Mass for a dead pope -- an exhibit with 29 attendant paintings all centering on one major attraction, the first visit to the US of Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ, whose own story is amazing. It was painted in 1602 and disappeared in the 18th century, only to turn up in 1993 in the dining room of a Jesuit residence in Dublin, Ireland. Its rediscovery is the art-world analogue of learning about Thomas Jefferson's unacknowledged offspring: the past is suddenly transformed. The Taking of Christ is on view at the McMullen Museum at Boston College from February 1 to May 17.

Among the gallery shows are a few must-sees. "The Ten," a powerful exhibit of New York's outstanding abstract expressionists of the 1930s, continues at the Mercury Gallery through February 20. At the Center Street Studio (369 Congress Street), an exhibit in February of some of Boston's strongest abstract minimalists -- imagine Steve Reich working in oil -- will feature works, both prints and paintings, by Bill Thompson, Bill Wheelock, Jeff Perrott, and James Stroud. And while Barbara Krakow (10 Newbury Street) keeps to the traditionally trendy -- Louise Bourgeois through January 9, followed by the ubiquitous Kiki Smith from January 16 to February 26 -- a number of places are looking beyond the Sotheby's catalogue. The Chapel Gallery (14 Newbury Street), Boston's only venue for serious glass artists, hosts the totemic work of Preston Singletary (January 10 through February 2), while the Howard Yezerski Gallery (14 Newbury Street) will show three nontraditional painters in January, February, and March: Mark Milloff, Carter Potter, and Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz, respectively.

One of the painful ironies of '99 is that many of Boston's best won't be on view in Boston proper (or improper). While Ken Beck puts in an appearance at Gallery Naga (67 Newbury Street) March 5 through 27, it's as part of a two-man show, which is too bad. Pat Keck isn't to be found anywhere, unless you luck into one of her works in a back room at the Genovese/Sullivan Gallery (47 Thayer Street). Both Paul Rahilly and Janet Monafo will be showing no closer than New York (Rahilly in a group show at the Ice Gallery in Manhattan through the end of January and Monafo in one of the year's best solo shows at the Hollis Taggart Gallery from February 4 to March 6).