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Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Alison Croney Moses's ‘This Moment for Joy' is beautiful shelter
When she conceived of the sculpture last fall, 'we were not in this particular moment,' the artist said, referring to the turmoil and anxiety Donald Trump's presidency brought to her world. But after the election, a safe space for joy seemed all the more urgent. Advertisement Croney Moses,42, has been making rounded wood sculptures since her grad school days at Rhode Island School of Design. It was only when she had children – now six and eight – that she found her artistic mission. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'I have done a lot of work in my art practice to process my experience of that transition' to motherhood, she said. 'The societal context in which that happens is not caring and supportive — specifically for Black women.' Alison Croney Moses shapes laminated wood for a scale model of her Triennial installation in her Allston studio. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff) Lane Turner/Globe Staff Black women are Advertisement When she sought out community with other Black women, she found healing, and with other mothers, organized gatherings for joy and play. 'We have to find our joy, we as women, to feel free regardless of what society is doing,' Croney Moses said. 'To feel free, we have to lean into our joy so that we actually have balance in our lives.' Her own bodily experience began to inform her sculptures — womblike vessels, pods referring to babies, surfaces like skin — and Croney Moses's career took flight. In 2023, she left her job as associate director of the 'I'm on a tipping point of, 'Am I rooted in Boston? Is this feasible for me to continue my art practice and continue to grow?',' she said. 'Things like the Boston Triennial, I think, make it feasible.' Then there's community. 'This Moment for Joy' is a space for gathering. 'This piece really has Black women in mind, but it's for everyone,' she said. 'I hope everyone feels welcomed and encouraged to gather there.' Alison Croney Moses's "This Moment for Joy" during the fabrication process at 4N Woodworks in Lowell. (credit?) Alison Croney Moses Croney Moses and two other Boston artists, Andy Li and Evelyn Rydz, took part in the Advertisement 'You don't really learn public art in school,' said Triennial assistant curator Jasper A. Sanchez, who runs the program. 'It's designed as an on-ramp for public art.' The group learned how to untangle the red tape surrounding public art. When they grappled with size, everything about Croney Moses's practice changed. Usually, a simple sketch is all she needs to start building a sculpture. 'Half the design work happens as I'm making it,' she said. That wouldn't wash for ginormous. She started with her familiar, pod-shaped vessel form. 'But when you translate that to a large-scale solid wood construction,' she said, 'that feels really overpowering and kind of oppressive.' To boot, she learned that enclosed spaces are verboten in public art — people might sleep in them. Alison Croney Moses in her Allston studio as she prepares for the Boston Triennial. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff) Lane Turner/Globe Staff 'I ended up jumping from this solid construction I normally work with to an open slatted construction,' Croney Moses said. 'I'm hoping that design will still have that feel of protection and safety.' After several iterations digitally and in the woodshop, the final product came together earlier this month at wood fabricator Next, she faces the 'public' part of public art. At this size, she hopes her piece is seen as a clarion invitation. 'It's like a call to the public of 'this is a moment for joy.'' Croney Moses said. 'I know there's all this other work we have to do. But we cannot forget the joy.' Advertisement
Boston Globe
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A citywide showing of major contemporary art aims to unseat Boston's bronze statue ideal
Kate Gilbert, executive director of the Boston Public Art Triennial, in the lobby of the Boston Public Library where one of many public artworks will be installed next month. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff Advertisement 'It really does feel like a completely different city than 10 years ago, ' said Kate Gilbert, the Triennial's executive director. 'There's just a greater aptitude for experimentation We're over our fear of the ephemeral — of a lot of those old fears, I think.' Specifics will be made public next month, but installations will run a gamut of form and idea, from large-scale sculpture to video to performances , by artists both local and far-flung: Boston's Alison Croney Mosesand Stephen Hamilton, Nicolas Galanin, a widely celebrated Indigenous artist from Alaska. Advertisement For Hamilton, whose project will be installed in Roxbury, the Triennial 'is not something I could have imagined when I graduated (from MassArt) in 2009,' he said. 'But I'm also looking to the future. How can an event like this help us grow?' He might look to the rare feat of cooperation the Triennial has achieved: the Artist Stephen Hamilton in his Allston studio as he prepares for the Boston Triennial. Lane Turner/Globe Staff 'The idea, really, is to have an experiment happening out in public,' said Karin Goodfellow, the city's Boston's reputation as an international cultural center is rooted in its past, and its public art landscape reflects that: Now + There's projects were everything Boston's public realm was not: Ephemeral. Contemporary. Oblique. Diverse. Some works were predicated on play; others, Advertisement The Triennial will re-up its citywide program every three years, and its aim is not modest: To be a permanent emblem of a new Boston that's waited so long for its time to come. Partnerships are key to that vision. At the Museum of Fine Arts,the museum's contribution to the Triennial effort flanks its grand entrance: A pair of shimmering chromium sculptures by the Mohawk artist A view of "The Knowledge Keepers" looking out from the Museum of Fine Arts. Left: "Andre," by Alan Michelson, 2024. Right, "Appeal to the Great Spirit," Cyrus E. Dallin, 1909. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The museum's contribution to a new way of seeing an old city, 'The Knowledge Keepers' is heavy with symbolism of a city in the throes of change. A Meeting with Triennial staff over time, 'it's been clear to me that they were always approaching us with this idea that (the Triennial) could be a real change agent in the way in which Bostonians think about the art that's around them in the city,' said Ian Alteveer, chair of the MFA's Contemporary Art Department, who commissioned the work. 'I'm thrilled, and I'm also learning from this process myself.' Advertisement At the City of Boston, Goodfellow is stewarding the city's own attempt at ephemeral, experimental public culture as part of the Monuments Project, funded with "The Embrace," by Hank Willis Thomas, on a snowy day in 2023 shortly after it was installed on Boston Common. The artwork commemorates Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and depicts four intertwined arms, representing the hug they shared after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff The program distributed $1 million of that grant among . The city also has a roster of its own projects, to be announced later this month. Called Though it may feel sudden, new ways of thinking about public space – who it's for, what it can say, what it can do – are the product of a long, slow evolution. Unease around monuments in particular as simplistic emblems of complex histories had been simmering for years when, in 2020, the murder of George Floyd brought sudden, urgent action. The statue of Robert E. Lee, altered by artists and protesters, at Lee Circle in Richmond, Va., June 20, 2020, before it was taken down. The monument became a rallying point for a national takedown movement after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Carlos Bernate/NYT In Richmond, Virginia, a bronze statue of Robert E. Lee astride a horse Boston's history is less fractious than the segregated South; but Advertisement Tory Bullock, who started a movement to remove "The Emancipation Group" monument of Lincoln towering over an enslaved person in 2020. Barry Chin/Globe Staff That same month in the North End, on the empty stone plinth. Installed by Boston artist Cedric Douglas, he projected the images of an array of local icons as a public honor: Elma Lewis, the iconic Roxbury arts educator; Mel King, the long-time Civil Rights activist; Jessie 'Little Doe' Baird, a Native American linguist who helped preserve and revive the Wampanoag language. He called it could see its potential. As part of the city's Unmonument efforts this summer, Douglas will extend the project he began in 2020; he'll be out in public asking Bostonians what should occupy the empty plinth where 'The Emancipation Project' stood. 'These are the kinds of projects that we mean to inform us going forward,' Goodfellow said. The installation occupied the former site of the Christopher Columbus statue, which was beheaded in June. @aramphoto Public experiments are the lifeblood of a necessarily nimble outfit like the Triennial. For a city government and art museums, it's new terrain. But they're learning from each other in a way that could help rewire how the city itself thinks about public art. 'We can offer them some thoughts on the public realm that they haven't really engaged with, and we're learning from them, too,' Gilbert said. 'But it's about trust and collaboration more broadly, and that's what's really exciting.' Advertisement And maybe, just maybe, this experiment waiting to happen can help show Boston not what it's always been, but what it could be, she said. 'It feels like a Pollyanna moment,' she laughs, 'but 'If we can do this at the civic level, really, what else can we achieve?' Murray Whyte can be reached at
