Historical account of prominent artists from Cape Ann.

In 1970 the Museum of Fine Arts commissioned a two-volume Centennial history by its trustee, Walter Muir Whitehill. That was a time of turmoil as then director Perry T. Rathbone was forced to resign resulting from the questionable acquisition of a portrait by Raphael later returned to Italy.Instability followed with the quick succession of acting director, Cornelius Vermeule, the ill-fated Merrill Rueppel, then Asiatic curator, Jan Fontein promoted from acting to full time director. Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1870 to 2020: An Oral History is only the second publication chronicling 150 years of a great museum with aspects of its collection second to none. The book summarizes events of the first century with a vivid update of what has occurred since then.The fascinating story of a world-class museum is updated in the words of each of its directors from Perry T. Rathbone to Matthew Teitelbaum. There are also interviews with curators, trustees, art historians, administrators, and arts journalists.The founders were individuals of class and privilege who gave generously. The tone of Brahmin elitism changed by the 1950s as the museum expanded and become more costly to maintain. There was a search for new money and expansion of the board to include Jews and people of color. By the 1960s the museum drew broad criticism for its elitism and indifference to modern/ contemporary art and Boston's contemporary artists, including the Jewish Boston Expressionists. Charges of racism have accelerated in the past few years as they have for all cultural institutions. The MFA has been charged with a transition from the "Our Museum" of its founders to a "Museum for all the people of Boston" under current director Matthew Teitelbaum.As an observer and writer, Charles Giuliano is a consummate insider. In 1963 upon graduation from Brandeis University he worked for two and a half years as a conservation intern for the Egyptian Department. He later became one of Boston's most influential art critics covering the museum for a range of publications. This book is the culmination of that coverage since the 1960s.

Dust jacket notes: "Vibrant, fresh, immediate! The direct oil painting technique is an intense reaction to nature, a race with time to capture the color, the light and shadow, the design and the spirit of a subject in a few short hours. And now, Emile Gruppe - master of the direct oil painting technique - shows how you can use the broad strokes and lively colors of this spontaneous approach to infuse your own paintings with vitality, vigor, and on-the-spot freshness. A firm believer in using the best materials for the best results, Gruppe begins with a quick review of his favorite brushes, colors, easels, and painting surfaces. Next, he covers the basics of good design, what to look for and how to orchestrate what you see: masses, lines, values, and relationships. Turning to color, a fundamental element of his painting technique, Gruppe discusses complements, color harmony, color vibration, local color, reflected color, and using color to create atmospheric perspective. He explains how color appears on various kinds of days - foggy, clear, cloudy - and under different lighting conditions - front lighting, backlighting, sidelighting. In subsequent chapters, the author focuses on composing seascapes and landscapes; he explains how to paint rocks, ocean, lighthouses, boats, piers, pilings, roads, trees, streams, snow, mountains, valleys. Then, in full-color step-by-step demonstrations, the author shows how he captures a subject in his unique, exuberant, on-the-spot style.

In the late 19th-early 20th century American artists began to gather in summer colonies that stretched from California to New England. In focused recognition of that development, this exhibition groups selected pairs of paintings or prints by artists who worked at very different north-east art colonies at Cape Ann (Gloucester and Rockport), Massachusetts on the one hand, and Monhegan Island, Maine on the other. These locations separated by a hundred miles of ocean became, as did many other contemporary art colonies, important crossroads in the history of American art as they hosted major artists through the years. In the case of these two colonies, figures such as Theresa Bernstein, Eric Hudson, Leon Kroll, Hayley Lever, James Fitzgerald, Lester Stevens, Stow Wengenroth and others visited, and sometimes lived, in both locations. This exhibition includes works by these and other artists from the collections of the Monhegan Museum of Art and History, the Cape Ann Museum, the Rockport Art Association, and private collections. Works by each of these and other artists depicting aspects of either location reflect the differences between the city-size Cape Ann, with its large industrial Gloucester harbor, sizable fishing fleet, and extended Rockport seashore, and by contrast the tiny off-shore island with its amazing cliff formations and smaller harbor and lobster fleet. Published by the Monhegan Museum of Art & History, Monhegan, Maine, to accompany the exhibition of the same name organized by the Monhegan Museum of Art & History and the Cape Ann Museum on view at the MMA&H from July 1 to September 30, 2021, and at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts, from October 23, 2021, to January 16, 2022.