Newport Art Museum and Art Association News
October 15, 2010 The Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
Though it's no longer the radical act that it once was, choosing to paint in an abstract style still takes a certain amount of artistic fortitude. While the subject matter can always carry some of the load in a realistic painting, abstract works have no such cushion. Compared with a painter of portraits or landscapes, the abstract painter has a much slimmer margin for error and much narrower range of effects — things like color, pattern and texture — to get his or her ideas across.
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July 22, 2010 YankeeMagazine.com
Edgar Allen Beem
The focus of Surf Island is the surf and surfers of Aquidneck Island (where Newport is located). While Evans does provide portraits of a few local surfing celebrities such as Sid Abbruzzi and Katie Egan, he does not take the conventional surf shooter's approach to surfing photography - the endless wave of glamour shots of famous surfers riding the glassy faces of monster tubes. His approach is much more naturalistic.
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June 6, 2010 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
NEWPORT — It's the kind of photograph that makes you want to drop what you're doing and book a flight to Hawaii: a lone surfer riding a white-capped wave across an endless expanse of blue. Look long enough, and you might even reach for some sunscreen.
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May 27, 2010 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
For most people, summer means travel. Maybe that's why so many of the summer's top gallery and museum exhibits emphasize exotic locales, whether it's Central America ("Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea" at the Peabody-Essex Museum), India and the Far East ("Odyssey: The Photographs of Linda Connor" at the RISD Museum) or even the fashion runway ("Avedeon Fashion, 1944-2000" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Here, then, are 10 top picks for summer.
•"Surf Island: A Ride with Newport's Surf Community," June 5-Sept. 5 at the Newport Art Museum. Photographer Jason Evans has spent the past few years chronicling Newport's lively surf scene. The result: A little bit of Maui amid the mansions.
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April 14, 2010 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
A closer look at the portraits, meanwhile, reveals a wealth of surface detail, including bare spots (the result of taping down pieces of steel wool) and flecks of half-rusted metal.
Of course, there wouldn't be much point to all this if the portraits themselves weren't interesting. Fortunately, Solondz's portraits turn out to be fascinating
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April 12, 2010 newportseen.com
"AirBorn", artist Rene Stawicki's series of dramatic allegorical paintings inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, was one of two featured exhibits at the recent reception at the Newport Art Museum, attended by Museum members, art buffs, a gallery owner, and friends.
Artist Esther Solondz's "There and Not There: Rust Portraits by Esther Solondz", in which the artist used steel wool, iron filings, salt and water applied to cotton paper to create a series of rust portraits, was commanding, with images often four to five feet in height. " The portraits were as much a chemistry experiment as a technique, and a video of the artist at work played in the hall leading to the exhibit.
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February 24, 2010 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
The 100 or so artworks selected by guest juror Monica Ramirez-Montagut, curator of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., are consistently top-notch. And some — among them a gem-like landscape by Pieter Roos, a towering Brancusi-ish sculpture by Peter Dipenbrock and an ingeniously addictive installation by Robert Kieronski — are even better than that.
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February 4, 2010 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
Contrary to popular opinion, not all artists are maladjusted loners.
True, there are a few well-publicized examples of self-destructive behavior that probably account for most of the stories about artists as tormented, antisocial misfits. Yet for every Van Gogh or Pollock or Basquiat there are many more artists who are friendly, outgoing and well-adjusted.
Then there are people like William Heydt, a Newport artist whose sunny, paint-dappled watercolors are the focus of a one-man show at the Newport Art Museum. Rather than simply tolerating the world outside his studio door, Heydt revels in it. Rather than treating other people as a distraction, he actively seeks them out. Rather than a lonely introvert, he comes across as something of a social butterfly. (If he wasn't an artist, one could easily imagine Heydt as a barnstorming politician in the Bill Clinton mold.)
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December 7, 2009 Newport Now
Andrea E. McHugh
NEWPORT, R.I. - The area's best interior and event designers and aficionados gathered Friday night to admire half a dozen exquisitely appointed tabletops for the opening of Newport Art Museum's Holiday Tables exhibit.
Participating designers include Rentals Unlimited, Exquisite Events & Sayles Livingston, Linda Lee Butler Designs, The Davis Design Studio, Tish Bodell Hopkins Designs, and Jill Wilson of LooLoo Design. While sipping on champagne from Bellevue Wine & Spirits and enjoying hors d'oeuvres from Glorious affairs, the Hotel Viking and Plantation Catering, as well as sweet treats from Kilwin's Chocolates, admirers cast their votes for their favorite while perusing the holiday-inspired tables on display throughout the galleries of the Museum's Griswold House.
The "winning" table incorporated birch tree limbs and was designed by Exquisite Events and Sayles Livingston. The Holiday Tables will be on exhibit through Jan. 3, 2010.
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June 25, 2009 Providence Journal
Bill van Siclen
There was a time, just over a century ago, when Rhode Islanders couldn't spend a day at the beach without bumping into a famous artist. There was Martin Johnson Heade, who came to paint the thunderstorms rumbling across Narragansett Bay. There was William Trost Richards, who painted the surf breaking near his home on Jamestown Island. And there were artists like John La Farge and John Frederick Kensett, who explored the rocky cliffs and coasts of Portsmouth and Middletown.
Nowadays, of course, artists still visit these storied locations. Still, it's been a while since cutting-edge painters — and Heade, Richards and La Farge were all cutting-edge by the standards of their day — spent some quality time painting and sketching along the Rhode Island coast.
Sue McNally, a Newport artist whose work is the focus of a wonderful solo exhibit at the Newport Art Museum, aims to change all that. A longtime fan of painters such as Heade and La Farge, McNally decided to test her own (considerable) painting skills against her 19th-century heroes.
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June 11, 2009 Providence Journal
Bill van Siclen
NEWPORT Never mind what the calendar says.
Thanks to some lucky timing, two Bellevue Avenue neighbors — the National Museum of American Illustration and the Newport Art Museum — are hosting summer exhibits that not only showcase American art but celebrate the depth and variety of the American experience. If these shows don't make you want to break out the Fourth of July bunting a few weeks early, nothing will.
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June 8, 2009 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
Like many Americans, Terry Murray is plenty steamed up about the country's financial crisis.
Still, Rhode Island's best-known banker isn't in the mood to talk money, at least not today. Instead, Murray and his wife Suzanne have agreed to a rare interview to help publicize a new exhibit showcasing works from their personal art collection. The show, "The Art of Life: Selections from the Terrence and Suzanne Murray Collection," opens Saturday at the Newport Art Museum.
"We really want this to be about the art," Murray says in a voice that's part suggestion, part command. "Let's save all the personal, behind-the-scenes stuff for another day."
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April 10, 2009 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
You don't have to know a lot about art, music or architecture to enjoy the jaunty, color-filled paintings and watercolors on display in "Irving B. Haynes: Abstractions, 1960-2005" at the Newport Art Museum.
In fact, the show, which celebrates the work of a much-beloved Rhode Island School of Design professor, brims with so much energy and good cheer that it's practically a spa treatment for your eyes. If a half-hour visit doesn't chase away the winter blues, nothing will.
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March 7, 2009 Newport Daily News
Gayle Hargreaves
Newport, RI: Eleanore Kapnick loves to sell. With a saleswoman's instincts, she moves a diverse array of merchandise every week: hand-dyed silk scarves, antique tools, landscape paintings and 19th century glassware. Kapnick is a "Griffie" - one of about 20 volunteers who staff the Newport Art Museum's Griffon Shop, a consignment boutique featuring antiques, collectibles and original art.
Revenue from Griffon Shop sales, "is an important part of the Museum's budget," said Acting Executive Director Elizabeth Goddard recently, during a social gathering for the shop volunteers in her Newport home. Goddard also appreciates the Griffies' "dedication and spirit of volunteerism - it's one of the Museum's greatest assets."
The Griffon Shop has been a steady presence on the Newport antique scene for 20 years. Anne Ross launched the enterprise in 1987 as a way to support the Museum while pursuing her interest in antiques, and she managed the shop for more than ten years. Peggy Maxwell took over in 1998 then passed the leadership reins to current manager, Joan Klaserner, in 2006.
During its first decade, the Griffon Shop set up operations in what is now a spacious children's art classroom in the Museum's Griswold House. The shop had its own entrance and hours, operating more independently of the Museum than it does now. Those were heady days. Ross remembers, "We had some really good consigners and we made a lot of money every month. Tuesdays became known as antique dealer day. They came looking for bargains of course. We got on real well with the antique dealers - many are still my friends." Ross recalls making $11,000 in one night at a special Christmas sale event.
Ross - who is now in her 90s - talked about how much she enjoyed working at the shop. "I met an awful lot of people, from many different areas all over the world: tourists, antique dealers, consigners. It was a fun place to be…and you learn a lot. You have to do a lot of research to learn when things were made and where, and what they're worth. You have to keep up with the shows in New York and elsewhere."
The Griffon Shop corps is primarily a sisterhood, although Curtis LaFrance, one of the original Griffies, is still active on the book keeping end of the enterprise at age 96. This diverse group of women spans three generations. They've been entrepreneurs, fashion industry professionals, teachers, homemakers, retail merchandisers, legal secretaries and nurses. They've lived and worked in big cities and small towns, war zones and libraries. What they share is an interest in antiques, a way with people and a knack for "closing the sale."
Genteel conversation and refined attire graced the gathering in Goddard's home last week, belying the assertive energy that drives these volunteers. Like Kapnick, most Griffies love to sell and if you drop by the shop often enough, or even run into a Griffie off site, you can expect a dulcet-toned sales pitch. "They now know me as a mark for jewelry," said Suzanne Hauerstein, Volunteer Coordinator at the Museum. "They'll say, ‘Oh Suzanne we have some new bracelets today!'"
SIDEBAR:
The Griffon Shop takes in consignments on Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. No appointment is necessary. The shop is open Tuesday-Friday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Saturday 10 am to 4 p.m.; Sunday 1 to 4 p.m. The Newport Art Museum is located in Newport's Old Quarter at 76 Bellevue Avenue. For more information call (401) 848-8200.
March 5, 2009 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
Thanks to a record number of submissions (more than 300), this is one of the largest members' shows in the museum's history. In all, there are more than 100 artworks, ranging from traditional prints and paintings to more adventurous fare such as video and installation art.
It also helps that the museum selected Nick Capasso, a longtime curator at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Mass., as this year's juror. Not only is Capasso a fair-minded judge who's open to a wide variety of styles and approaches, but his comments — particularly those regarding the show's prize-winning entries — are thoughtful and articulate.
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February 12, 2009 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
Solos in Newport
The Newport Art Museum is hosting a pair of midwinter solo exhibits. Coincidentally, both feature artists named Lucia and both focus on passages of one kind or another.
In her exhibit "Hard Pass- ages," Warwick artist Lucia O'Reilly explores her own religious roots (she was raised as a strict Episcopalian) while calling attention to biblical writings that have been used to justify war, violence, slavery and the subjugation of women.
Passages of a more physical nature are the focus of "Icescapes: Impressions from the Polar Regions," an exhibit of paintings, drawings and watercolors by Lucia de Leiris.
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January 14, 2009 EastBayRI.com
Tom Shevlin
NEWPORT - Standing before a crowd of just over 100 people at the Newport Art Museum on Saturday, Jan. 10, Joel Rawson, the former executive editor of the Providence Journal, began to paint a rather grim picture.
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January 14, 2009 Providence Journal
NEWPORT - Art-making brings hundreds of people together during cold winter months at the Newport Art Museum. Winter programs for all ages begin in January. Now is also the time to register for February and March school vacation camps and for a Visiting Artist Workshop titled "Perspective Drawing" with well-known artist Susan Stone. The one-day workshop is scheduled to run March 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Museum offers fee discounts to Museum members on most programs.
Daytime and evening adult programs at the Museum's school, the Coleman Center for Creative Studies, include ceramics, collage, drawing, jewelry, painting, pastels, photography and printmaking. The Museum is offering two art history courses on Wednesdays this winter. "American Art 1820-1900" with Robert Kalaidjian runs from Jan. 14 to Feb. 4; "Samurai Swords and Silk Kimonos: Japanese Aesthetics" with Noelle King O'Connor runs from Feb. 11 through 25.
Children ages 9 through 12 can spend a day with nationally published editorial cartoonist, Jim Bush Feb. 28. "Cartooning with Jim Bush" costs $50 for Museum members; $65 for non-members.
Classes in a variety of media for young people in kindergarten through high school are meeting weekly beginning in January.
School vacation art camps are filling up fast. The Museum's art school, the Coleman Center for Creative Studies, is offering vacation programs in February and March for school-aged children and teens.
The museum is located at 76 Bellevue Ave. To register or for information, visit www.NewportArtMuseum.org or call (401) 848-2787.
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December 11, 2008 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
In collaboration with AS220 artistic director Umberto Crenca, Chazan has organized "NetWorks 2008," a series of exhibits that showcase both the art he collects and the artists and artisans he's befriended. The largest of the shows, at the Newport Art Museum, features the work of 19 artists, many with longstanding personal and professional ties to the Chazans.
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October 26, 2008 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
This year, the Newport Restoration Foundation is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Among other things, it has organized a small exhibit at the Newport Art Museum. It's also sponsoring a pair of public events — a slide lecture by NRF executive director Pieter Roos on Thursday and a panel discussion featuring staff members from the foundation's early days on Nov. 6. Both events start at 5:30 p.m. at the museum.
Last week, I talked to Pieter Roos about the $4.5-million-a-year foundation and its activities.
Let's start at the beginning. What inspired the world's richest woman to start a foundation dedicated to saving Colonial-era houses?
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October 19, 2008 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
NEWPORT Judging by his portrait, William C. Gibbs wasn't what you would call a touchy-feely kind of guy. Indeed, Gibbs, who served as governor of Rhode Island from 1821 to 1824 and whose official portrait is part of an unusual exhibit at the Newport Art Museum, looks positively fearsome — a scowling Old Testament prophet in a frock coat and bushy sideburns.
Gibbs' portrait was another matter.
After hanging in the Rhode Island State House for more than a century and a half, it definitely needed some pampering. Colors were fading, pigments were cracking and the varnish, typically applied as a protective topcoat to a finished canvas, was turning brown.
Fortunately, help arrived in the form of the Rhode Island State House Restoration Society, a nonprofit group that has spent the last two years restoring about a dozen of the state's 71 governors' portraits. Ten of those paintings, including portraits of Gibbs, John Wanton (1734-40) and Charles C. Van Zandt (1877-80), are currently on display at the Newport Art Museum.
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August 27, 2008 Providence Business News
PBN Staff
WASHINGTON - The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded a $134,000 Museums for America grant to the Newport Art Museum, enabling it to continue and expand its MUSE museum-studies program for local teens.
MUSE, launched in 2005, gives a preview of careers in museum management and historic preservation to students from Aquidneck Island public high schools.
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July 27, 2008 The Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
In many ways, they're the oddest of odd couples.
One paints, while the other makes sculpture. One has a loyal following in Providence, while the other may be the best known artist on Aquidneck Island. One loves African and pre-Columbian art, while the other would rather spend a day sketching the mansions on Bellevue Avenue. One favors loud Hawaiian shirts, while the other is more of a khakis-and-polo-shirt kind of guy.
Yet this summer, Bob Rizzo — sculptor, surf-shirt connoisseur and former Providence arts czar — and Richard Grosvenor — painter, teacher and longtime dean of Newport's close-knit art community — find themselves sharing nearby galleries at the Newport Art Museum.
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July 24, 2008 The Providence Journal
Glance too quickly at the paintings of Dora Atwater Millikin and you might think you're in familiar summer-in-Rhode-Island territory. There are the usual locations, including Newport, Little Compton and nearby Westport, Mass. There are the usual subjects: boats, beaches, water. And there's that familiar New England light — cool and clear in the morning, then turning warmer and hazier in the afternoon.
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July 20, 2008 The Providence Journal
Faye Zuckerman
Newport is known as a formal party town.
Men keep their tuxes pressed; women have an assortment of gowns set to go.
There's at least one black-tie party per week during the summer. And the one bash that stretches Newport's formal dress code to beyond the expected is the bash put on by supporters of the Newport Art Museum.
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July 15, 2008 The Providence Journal
Maria Carroll received the Newport Art Museum's Karen Ryan Annual Volunteer Award for outstanding service at an event held May 6. Carroll is the inaugural recipient of the award, which was established in memory of Newport Art Museum volunteer and staff member Karen Ryan, who died this year.
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March 20, 2008 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
Most artists, I suspect, have a love-hate relationship with juried exhibitions.
On the one hand, there's always a chance that the "jury" (typically composed of one or more well-known artists, critics or academics) will take a liking to your work and decide to include it in the exhibit. In that sense, juried shows represent the art world at its most democratic. On the other hand, if the jury doesn't like your work, you're out — no explanations given. In that sense, juried exhibits are closer to a benign form of artistic dictatorship.
In Newport, the "2008 Newport Annual Members' Juried Exhibition" features works by more 70 artists, mainly from Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. The show was juried by Michael Rush, a well-known writer and critic and director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.
Though it's nearly twice the size of the Art Club exhibit, the NAM show features a similar mix of prints, drawings, paintings, sculptures and other artworks. And it, too, has a pronounced photographic streak, although here the effects are more likely to show up in other disciplines.
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March 12, 2008 Newport Mercury
Lisa Utman Randall
When Brenda Levasseur was 10 years old her mother gave her a drawing book. "There were five of us kids, four girls and one boy, so my mother knew to keep us busy," she said. Levasseur soon realized that she could copy just about anything she put her mind to and by 12 she had begun making wax figures and had fallen in love with art.
A stunning charcoal drawing by the 54-year-old resident of North Dartmouth, Mass., was this year's choice for Best in Show at the Newport Art Museum's annual juried members' show, the Newport Annual. The exhibit, open to artists working in a variety of mediums, was juried by Michael Rush, Director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.
Of the 254 art works submitted, Rush selected 84 for the show. Levasseur wins a $200 cash prize and will have a solo exhibit at the Newport Art Museum at a later date.
Her entry, "Windows to Our Soul" (2007), is a large scale — 37 ¼ ” by 27 ¼ "— close-up portrait expertly rendered in charcoal.
From across the room it appears photographic, but upon closer inspection the visual effect of charcoal on paper is more evident. As the title suggests, Levasseur has paid particular attention to her subject's eyes and the result is both deeply moving and arresting. "I always go for the eyes," she explained. "I do the eyes first, there's just something about them…."
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February 24, 2008 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
NEWPORT Painter Roger Kirby happily admits that he leads a charmed life. For three months each year, he lives and works at his summer house on the coast of Maine. He spends another six months in Newport, where his studio overlooks a quiet street off Bellevue Avenue. And the final three months?
"That's for sailing," he says. "I'm afraid I'm really a bit of a fanatic about it."
It's an idyllic existence — or at least it was until three years ago, when Kirby made what he calls a "life-altering discovery." While attending his father's funeral, Kirby found a logbook detailing more than two dozen bombing missions that his father, a former British RAF pilot, had flown during World War II. The discovery was especially surprising, Kirby says, because his father rarely talked about his wartime experiences.
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January 13, 2008 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
NEWPORT Growing up, Wendy Wahl remembers using the Encyclopedia Britannica to gather information for her school papers and homework.
"It was the place to go when you really needed an in-depth explanation or analysis," she says. "Some of the entries went on for pages and pages."
Nowadays, Wahl, a South County artist who specializes in all-natural materials such as paper and fabric, is more likely to do her research online. But in Uncovered Grove, a room-filling installation at the Newport Art Museum, Wahl has found a new use for old encyclopedias: turn them into art.
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November 25, 2007 Providence Journal
By Bill Van Siclen
NEWPORT Say the word "Impressionism" and most art lovers' faces will light up faster than a plastic Santa at Christmas. Say the word "Barbizon" and the reaction is more often "Ho-hum" than "Ho, ho, ho!"
That's a shame for several reasons. Without Barbizon's example to build on, French Impressionism might well have developed along very different lines — or not at all. Indeed, Impressionist hallmarks such as dappled brushwork and plein-air painting (painting outdoors rather than in a studio) actually originated a decade or two earlier with Barbizon painters such as Camille Corot, Theodore Rousseau and Charles-François Daubigny.
The big difference between Barbizon and Impressionism is color: while Monet & Company liked theirs bold and bright, Barbizon painters typically favored a palette of earthy browns, greens and ochers.
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November 4, 2007 Providence Journal
Bill Van Siclen
When a deadly tsunami slammed into the coast of Thailand in December 2004, many Americans rushed to respond. Some donated money to international relief agencies. Others collected food and clothing to send to victims of the disaster. Judith Larzelere, an award-winning Westerly quiltmaker whose work is on display now at the Newport Art Museum, reached for a needle and thread.
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November 1, 2007 The Jamestown Press
Michaela Kennedy
Islanders who showed up for pastries and punch at the town hall open house Monday evening witnessed the rededication of a painting that was donated to the town years ago.
Local relatives of late nineteenth century American artist John Austin Sands Monks were on hand Oct. 29 to see the classic landscape picture assume a prominent place in the new council chambers on Narragansett Avenue.
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August 17, 2007 Providence Journal
Richard Salit
"Wet Paint" is usually a warning.
But in Newport, it's also an invitation.
Once a year, for a brief specified time, amateur and professional artists are invited to quickly create original pieces of art. Then, before the paint is even dry, they submit their works to be auctioned off — all in one evening — to benefit the Newport Art Museum.
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July 26, 2007 Providence Journal Bulletin
Bill Van Siclen
To her well-heeled friends, the Dallas-based art collector and socialite Elizabeth "Betty" Brooke Blake is known by a decidedly non-serious nickname: Betty Boop. But when it comes to collecting, especially in the challenging realms of modern and contemporary art, Blake is about as serious as they come.
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April 12, 2007 Newport This Week
Charles Avenengo
When Nancy Grinnell became curator at the Newport Art Museum nine years ago, she never thought she would wear so many hats. Recently, in preparation for the current "Annual Members' Juried Show", there were last-minute changes, and she was drafted to hang the exhibit herself.
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January 3, 2007 Connect For Kids
Gayle Hargreaves
Before heading off to university this fall, Diana Boyadjian has a big project to complete. ?I?m re-doing my room completely?I feel like a curator!? That?s a shift in self-perception for Diana, who admits she didn?t fully understand the meaning of the word ?curator? until she enrolled in MUSE: Introduction to Museum Studies, during her last semester at high school. Now she?s using many of the applied learning skills she honed through MUSE in real-world situations ranging from re-decorating her room to making choices about higher education and a career.
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