Things to do in the Boston area, 4/28 - 5/03
Explore the 160th anniversary of Qi Baishi's birth with nearly 40 exquisite works on display.
Thursday, May 1 📚 Shubha Sunder – Harvard Book Store – 7pm
Award-winning author Shubha Sunder discusses her debut novel "Optional Practical Training" in conversation with Michelle Min Sterling.
Sunday, May 4 🎤 Ed Helms: SNAFU Live – WBUR CitySpace – 6:30pm
Actor and comedian Ed Helms presents his new book "SNAFU," exploring history's greatest blunders, inspired by his hit podcast.
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Boston Globe
23-07-2025
- Boston Globe
The Boston French Film Festival returns to the MFA with a focus on authenticity
From romantic comedies to thrillers, Irving says the films showing at the festival have an 'emotional realism' that makes them affecting to audiences. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up This is especially true in the festival's opening film, 'Three Friends (Trois Amies),' a romantic comedy for adults that Irving calls 'a real treat.' The film comes from award-winning writer-director Emmanuel Mouret and revolves around three middle-aged women and their complex (and sometimes unwittingly overlapping) love lives. Irving says the film is thoughtful in its examination of complicated modern love, while still remaining lighthearted and energetic. Advertisement A scene from "Three Friends" by Emmanuel Mouret. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts In the film, Mouret tells the story of what Americans (somewhat dismissively) call a mid-life crisis. But what Irving appreciates about 'Three Friends' is the tone it uses to tackle the notion of reinventing yourself in your 40s. 'What's very French about this film is that it treats midlife-questioning as a serious philosophical quandary,' Irving says. 'These complex ideas are not something to gloss over or make fun of.' Advertisement One of Irving's favorite films in the festival, 'Holy Cow (Vingt Dieux),' is a refreshing and scrappy coming-of-age comedy. The film follows 18-year-old Totone (Clément Faveau), who unexpectedly finds himself juggling the responsibilities of managing his struggling family farm and caring for his 7-year-old sister after his father's untimely death. To secure his future, Totone enters a regional Comté cheesemaking contest. The film won the Youth Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024. 'Holy Cow' is set and filmed in Jura, a rural agricultural region in eastern France, where director Louise Courvoisier grew up. Courvoisier cast only non-professional actors from the region; she found Faveau working at a poultry farm and attending agricultural high school. 'Its really fun, but it's also eye-opening,' says Irving, who also pointed to the real-life feel of the characters and cinematography as particular strengths of the film. Irving also highlighted ' 'Souleymane's Story' won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024, including for Best Actor for Sangare's break-out role, and the Jury Prize. Advertisement Irving says the film aligns with a new trend in French cinema: realistic thrillers about ordinary people racing against time. 'The intensity is even higher because the stakes feel authentic,' she says. 'It feels like something that could happen to you.' Abou Sangare as Souleymane in "Souleymane's Story" by writer-director Boris Lojkine. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Thought-provoking subject matter seems to be the theme of this year's festival. 'We're starting to turn to movies to numb ourselves and turn off our brains,' Irving says. 'Which is good to indulge [in] sometimes.' But she wants the festival to be a break from ethos of film acting solely as an escape. 'You have to balance that with things that will actually nourish you,' Irving says. This year's featured films, she hopes, will do just that. THE BOSTON FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL July 25 through Aug. 24 at the Museum of Fine Arts. For more information, including screening times, visit
Boston Globe
14-07-2025
- Boston Globe
On a journey of play, artist Szu-Chieh Yun guides students to a path from fear
Imagination helps, she told them. 'They imagined their own forest and they saw something in their mind and brought it into the real world' by making art out of it, she said. 'A way to overcome fear is to make room to imagine a pathway forward. Just like they did in this project.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Into the Forest' is on view at the MFA through Oct. 26. Advertisement Community Arts Initiative "Into The Forest" is Szu-Chieh Yun's exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Where to find her : Age : 36 Originally from : Yun immigrated with her family from Taiwan to Boston when she was 9. Lives in : East Boston Making a living : The artist/teacher is an adjunct professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Painter Szu-Chieh Yun at a table where she does bead work in her East Boston studio. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff Studio : Yun calls the studio in her live/work space in East Boston 'a cubicle.' Her tasks there are small-scale. 'I stretch my canvases there,' she said. For more ambitious projects, she makes use of her access to facilities at MassArt. Advertisement How she started : When she was a student at Paint tests on the wall at Szu-Chieh Yun's East Boston studio. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff More recently, the pandemic jumpstarted her art. Shortly before lockdown, Yun returned to Boston from Shanghai, where she taught elementary school art. 'I couldn't really apply for a job,' she said. 'My instinct was: You actually need to paint. This is what you need to do.' What she makes : 'Rage & Ecstasy,' the painting series she began during COVID, explores the 'I imagine myself as Karen and I'm caught on camera in this rage moment in public spaces,' Yun said. 'They were very emotionally taxing. I grew a lot of white hair.' Beadwork by artist Szu-Chieh Yun at her East Boston studio. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff The ecstasy followed. 'I started beading,' the artist said. 'It almost has a spiritual quality. It feels like drawing — the lines of these threads pull all these different pieces together.' Now, she sews glittering beaded pieces into her paintings. Her 'Rage & Ecstasy' exhibition opens at Simmons University's Trustman Art Gallery in September. How she works: 'With my hands first, and then I allow this personal journey through that,' Yun said. 'I respond to my environment and my experiences. I think deeply. I have to create from that.' Advice for artists : 'The reason why they're on this journey is to play,' Yun said. 'Let that lead them to the next thing.' Advertisement An untitled work by artist Szu-Cheh Yun, made of charcoal, coal slag, glass beads, and acrylic paint, on display at the Museum of Fine Arts. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston COMMUNITY ARTS INITIATIVE: INTO THE FOREST At Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., through Oct. 26.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Yahoo
National Gallery exhibition to shine a light on works of Renoir
The National Gallery is to stage a major exhibition of paintings by Renoir, described as the 'most significant' collection of the French impressionist's work in the UK for 20 years. The exhibition, Renoir And Love, will feature more than 50 works, and will go on display at the London gallery from October next year. Organised in partnership with the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Renoir And Love will focus on the artist's career between the mid-1860s and the mid-1880s. A National Gallery spokesman said the exhibition 'traces the evolution of the imagery of affection, seduction, conversation, male camaraderie and the sociability of the cafe and theatre, as well as merry-making, flirtation, courtship and child-rearing in Renoir's art'. Exhibition co-curator Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, said: 'More than any of his contemporaries, Renoir was committed to chronicling love and friendship and their informal manifestations as keys to modern life. 'Whether on Parisian street corners or in sun-dappled woodlands, he understood that emotion could be as fleeting, as evanescent, as blinding, as his other great and transitory subject, sunlight itself.' The exhibition will be on display from October 3 next year until January 31 2027.
