On View This Weekend

At the opening of the group exhibition “Days I Have Held, Days I Have Lost” at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, Conn., Barnes lamented that her role as director prevented her from gallery-hopping to see all the other openings. In Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, Barnes repined, you could pop into 10 shows in two hours. In the country, everything is a half hour away. She’s not wrong, and seeing everything that’s on view takes some planning. At KBFA, 5 x5 inch canvas by Sally Maca dazzle with nocturnal bursts of fireworks while the large-scale speedo-clad self-portrait by David Konigsberg is John Cheever brought to life in a Bombay Sapphire-colored swimming pool.

For darker waters, head to Carol Corey Fine Art, also in Kent, where Lisa Lebofsky’s oil on aluminum, “On The Horizon,” dips into Melville with foreboding ocean waves that lurch toward the viewer. Rick Shaefer’s liquid black-and-white charcoal work combines a painterly sensibility with a landscape photographer’s eye for contrast and composition.

Finally in Kent, Craven Contemporary celebrates its five-year anniversary highlighting works from powerhouses like Alex Katz and Damien Hirst and emerging talent like Canadian painter Bruno Leydet, who forgoes his usual male nudes against sherbet Italianate wallpaper in favor of a bold outdoor portrait where pistil-shaped sparklers explode over black like Dutch Old Master tulips.

Travel to the David M. Hunt Library’s ArtWall in Falls Village, Conn., and you’ll see work by the husband-and-wife duo Millree Hughes and Sharon, Conn., native Sarah Davis, on view through June 9. Davis’s dreamy landscapes cast an equally fond eye on solitary nature and urban neighborhood streets, while Hughes’s digital landscapes based on the mega-popular online multiplayer video game “World of Warcraft” seem to level criticism at the pixels we have not only turned our attention to, but fully immersed ourselves in.

Dave The Swimmer by David Konigsberg Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Trapani by Bruno Leydet Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Seascape After Squall by Rick Shaefer Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Dave The Swimmer by David Konigsberg Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Latest News

Ruth Franklin discusses ‘The Many Lives of Anne Frank’ at Beth David

Ruth Franklin and Ileene Smith in conversation at Congregation Beth David in Amenia.

Natalia Zukerman

Congregation Beth David in Amenia hosted a conversation on the enduring legacy of Anne Frank, one of the 20th century’s most iconic figures. Ruth Franklin, award-winning biographer and critic, shared insights from her highly acclaimed book “The Many Lives of Anne Frank” with thought-provoking questions from Ileene Smith, Editorial Director of the Jewish Lives series. This event, held on July 23 — the date Anne Frank would have turned 96 — invited the large audience to reconsider Anne Frank not just as the young writer of a world-famous diary, but as a cultural symbol shaped by decades of representation and misrepresentation.

Franklin and Smith dove right in; Franklin reading a passage from the book that exemplified her approach to Anne’s life. She described her work as both a biography of Anne Frank and a cultural history of the diary itself, a document that has resonated across the world.

Keep ReadingShow less
Prokofiev, piano and perfection: Yuja Wang at Tanglewood

Yuja Wang performs with the TMCO and Andris Nelsons.

Hilary Scott

Sunday, July 20 was sunny and warm. Nic Mayorga, son of American concert pianist, the late Lincoln Mayorga, joined me at Tanglewood to hear Yuja Wang play Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16. I first saw Wang on July 8, 2022, when she filled in for Jean-Yves Thibaudet on the opening night of Tanglewood’s summer season. She virtually blew the shed down with her powerful and dynamic playing of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

Nic was my guest last season on July 13, when Wang wowed us with her delicate interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. We made plans on the spot to return for her next date in Lenox.

Keep ReadingShow less