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Boston Globe
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Turner unbound: Yale revisits the radical painter's journey
I say this as a certifiable Turner freak, a sucker for every painterly gnash and flourish. 'Romance and Reality' delivers the goods upfront: At the entry hangs 'Staffa, Fingal's Cave,' from 1832, a dark symphony of painterly menace. The lurch of an ashen sea collides with bleached light from above, casting sandy cliffs in a meaty fleshtone through hoary mist; a frigate steams into coal-black fog towards a smouldering sun sunk into the horizon as it 'burst(s) through the raincloud, angry ,' in Turner's own words. Ah. J.M.W. Turner, "Harlech Castle, from Tygwyn Ferry by Summer's Evening Twilight," 1799. (Yale Center for British Art) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Critics, then and now, haven't bothered to suppress an eyeroll at Turner's penchant for the overwrought, and I'll admit to the occasional cringe of my own. Such is Turner, a high-order dramatist ever on the edge of schmaltz. But for me, his painterly might overpowers any misgivings, and any cringe is one of affection. Frank in his fury, he's the least British-seeming of Brits, an emotional powderkeg; that he's most-loved of all British artists ever might tell you something, too. Advertisement The mature Turner found an outlet for his fury in the righteous cause of abolition. One of the most powerfully harrowing paintings of all time, 'Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On),' 1840, now hangs at the MFA as part of its exhibition J.M.W. Turner, "On the Washburn," ca. 1815. (Yale Center for British Art) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection A barber's son, born in an upstairs flat on Covent Garden when it was a seething market alive with the stink of livestock, Turner felt the roiling chaos of his time like few of his artistic peers, most of whom had the fine education and genteel upbringing of the upper class. A brash everyman with the gift of paint, Turner's work can feel like the furious explosion of the indignation of an entire social class ground down by indifferent elite rule – and at the MFA, by design, it surely did. Advertisement Yale, meanwhile, provides less a point of view than a Turner 101, a sample platter arranged by era and theme. The Center for British Art has more — and more significant — Turners in its collection than any other outside the United Kingdom. That saidEven so, I approached it with a little pre-emptory disappointment; I like my Turner unrestrained – raging fire-and-brimstone against the ills of the world, flexing his painterly muscle Stallone-like. 'Romance and Reality' is laid out almost primly, in chronological order, leading off with a hesitant young artist following the romantic realist tradition in his depictions of the British countryside. Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne: Morning, ca. 1845, oil on canvas. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection By mistake, I went the wrong way – the exhibition is a loop, entry and exit at the same point – and found much satisfaction in traveling the Turner timeline backwards, frontloading the experimental élan of his later years and meandering Benjamin Button-like back to his formative phase. To truly understand Turner – his unceasing yearning to move ever forward, to never stand pat – there's something deeply inspiring in working backwards from his dying breaths. Turning right at 'Staffa, Fingal's Cave,' I was in the exhilarating embrace of a section titled 'Tragic Vision' – cue the mournful string section of a movie soundtrack – and a suite of Turners so softly indistinct as to almost be breath hanging on winter air. Made in the final decade of his life, Turner was reaching ever further beyond the known, unmoored from this mortal plane and transported by the end of his brush. 'Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne: Morning,' 1845, made a half-dozen years before his death, feels like Turner becalmed: its glow beatific, its cliffs inchoate and dreamy through a misty gloaming. 'Squally Weather,' a small piece painted sometime between 1840 and 1845, knots shadow and light into a dense bundle, a storm of emotional tumult. Advertisement J.M.W. Turner, "Dort, or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed," 1818. (Yale Center for British Art). Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Turner's life may straddle the 18th and 19th centurycq, but he's often cited as the first Modern painter, though he died decades before the term was born. His loose, furious brushwork and wild sense of color inspired Impressionists like Monet and Pissaro, Modernism's vanguard. And in the hazy depths of his emotional landscapes, it's no reach to see the roots of Abstract Expressionism, a fury of feeling devised by a cohort of American painters after World War II. Indeed, thousands of watercolors discovered in his overstuffed home after his death – so disordered, one critic wrote, 'it might have been the scene of a murder' – feel, in hindsight, like clear lineage: stacks of papers stained and smeared with explosive color appear almost to be abstract experiments. Advertisement J.M.W. Turner, "Mer de Glace, in the Valley of Chamoix," 1803. (Yale Center for British Art) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Tracking backwards through Turner's life feels like being witness to a parallel version of art history, of an artist ever straining against convention even as he mastered it. 'Dort, or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed' (he did love his titles), from 1818, might be a standard maritime scene of its day -- stiff, traditional crisply-painted, with particular attention to the billow and shade of the tallship's sails – but for the teem of humanity Turner loads into it, a scene overflowing with labor and action. Turner's gifts were so abundant that he could do anything; instead, he did everything , and supremely well. The Yale show will give you that; a selection of his early watercolor landscapes are confounding in their precision, a young Turner bending the most capricious of media with uncanny ease. Subtly, it includes its counterpoints; 'Mer de Glace, in the Valley of Chamoix,' 1803, a mountain scene painted when he was just 28, lurches leftward as though blown by the wind with such violent verve your own feet wobble. J.M.W. Turner, "The Evening Gun," ca 1825. (Yale Center for British Art) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection And in easy eyeshot of 'Dort' is a wall of Turner's prints, the bulk of them in ashen and coal-black tones. The range of mastery confounds, from near-photographic clarity to the fog of the barely recognizable: The gothic arches of Kirstall Abbey, its every stone seam in high relief, astounds; nearby, the cascading shadow of 'Catania, Sicily,' subsumed in its black fog, feels almost Rothko-esque. No Turner is without its own provocation and mystery. Yale might be painting by numbers, but Turner never could. Advertisement Murray Whyte can be reached at
Wall Street Journal
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘J.M.W. Turner: Romance and Reality' Review: The Measure of a Master
New Haven, Conn. Conventional wisdom has it that Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was the first modern artist, his impressionistic landscapes and seascapes preceding French Impressionism by at least half a century. Not only that, but in over nearly six decades of leading the British art world, he transformed the genres of landscape and seascape. Or so the organizers of 'J.M.W. Turner: Romance and Reality' at the Yale Center for British Art (through July 27) remind us. The show, containing more than 75 works—oil paintings, watercolors and prints—from the Center's own collection, the largest Turner holdings outside Britain, comes as close as an exhibition of its concision can in backing up that claim.
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
British Art in a New Light
On the campus of Yale University, two art museums housed in landmark modernist buildings — each designed by Louis I. Kahn — sit directly across the street from one another. One, the Yale University Art Gallery, with an encyclopedic collection of about 300,000 objects, draws close to a quarter million people annually. The other, the Yale Center for British Art, with its specialized collection of more than 100,000 works from the 15th century to the present, brings in less than half that traffic. The British center is now aiming to even up those visitor numbers. It reopened in March after a two-year closure for conservation of the skylights and lighting throughout the building — the acclaimed architect's last realized project, which opened in 1977 and is widely considered an artwork in itself — and with a fresh exhibition philosophy. A piece by Tracey Emin, who came to fame as one of the so-called Young British Artists in the 1990s alongside peers like Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, inaugurates a new program of contemporary works in the lobby. Her glowing sculptural installation, with yellow neon lighting proclaiming in script 'I loved you until the morning' on a mirrored wall in the museum's entrance court, is visible from the street. It serves as an 'invitation' at the front door, said Martina Droth, the center's director, who was appointed in January after working with its collections for 16 years, most recently as chief curator. 'The envelope of the building doesn't scream museum; it's a little austere,' she said. 'I'm hoping that it signals to people there are things here for them.' In two inaugural exhibitions upstairs, large gestural paintings on the second floor focused on the female body by Emin — who established her reputation with confessional, ramshackle sculptural installations — have unexpected resonance with atmospheric landscapes on the third floor drawn from the center's almost 3,000 works by J.M.W. Turner, who was born almost 200 years before Emin and, like her, counted the English seaside town of Margate as an important second home. This pairing reflects the center's new curatorial approach, Droth said, showcasing the depth and richness of its historical collections 'and then taking those threads into the present moment with someone like Tracey, who absolutely sees herself in the lineage of Margate, famous for Turner and now famous for Tracey, and in those sort of painting traditions.' Emin's show, her first solo museum exhibition in North America, may introduce the artist to younger viewers or reintroduce her to those who remember 'Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection,' an exhibition that caused a public stir when it traveled to the Brooklyn Museum in 1999. There, Emin showed a tent embroidered with the names of everyone she had ever shared a bed with. 'Showing Tracey here is just a completely different proposition to showing her in Britain, where she's really a public figure and there's so much baggage around her,' said Droth, who organized the show. She has chosen to focus on Emin's painting, which she had struggled with at the Royal College of Art and abandoned early in her career. She resumed the medium after being selected to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2007, when she began to make paintings that center on the subjectivity of the female figure. Since the death of her mother in 2016, Emin has devoted herself to painting and bronze sculpture. In 2017, Emin bought a home and studio in Margate — where she had a difficult upbringing and was raped at 13 — and has spent most of her time there since 2020. (She also has a home in London.) 'She's depicting the body usually, but it's about the feeling of the body and an atmosphere and a mood,' said Droth, of Emin's paintings that make analogies between her own expressive brushwork and Turner's squalling seascapes. In the painting 'And It Was Love' (2023), which depicts a naked woman splayed across the canvas and a dark form in a wash of deep sunset red between her bent legs, 'you don't really know whether this is a medical emergency, a sexual scene, pleasure, pain,' Droth said. 'It's all of those things.' She noted the faint trace of the stoma on the figure's abdomen connected to a urostomy bag. (In 2020, Emin was diagnosed with bladder cancer and had radical surgery.) Reached by phone in Margate, Emin, now 61, described Turner — who lived part-time with his mistress just minutes from Emin's studio — as 'an early expressionist' and said she loved the 'modesty involved' in showing her work in the context of the British center's collection. 'There's a lot of people who might take my work more seriously now, simply because of the subject matter,' she said. 'I have a very strong opinion on being a woman and I think people understand now that I'm not screaming — I'm just making a point of showing the experiences that women go through.' She wrote a poem to Turner, and to their shared love of Margate's winter sunsets, which is included in a 2024 publication by the center that reproduced his last sketchbook. If Emin thinks about Turner, obviously Turner — born 250 years ago this year — didn't think about Emin. Lucinda Lax, the center's curator of paintings and sculpture who organized the Turner exhibition — the center's first since 1993 — called him 'the father of modern art.' She has included 'Margate' (circa 1822), Turner's view of the newly built seaside resort, with broken ships and workers eking out a living in the foreground, and 'Wreckers' (1834), featuring a tumultuous sea and abbreviated figures scavenging what they can from wreckage. 'He's really trying to bring out the experience, both physically and psychologically, of being part of a particular environment,' Lax said, 'where there's a real sort of sense of the splash of the sea and the whip of the wind.' Lax has also led the fourth-floor re-installation of the permanent collection. 'For the first time, we've got the whole chronological span of British art that's represented in our holdings here on one floor,' said Lax, who has integrated contemporary works by artists including Yinka Shonibare and Cecily Brown into galleries that used to end with the 19th century. She hopes to 'open up questions about empire, gender, the role of women.' As universities are in jeopardy of having funding cut by the government, which has flagged the use of words including 'gender' or 'women' on institutional websites, the British center is not shying away from 'engaging a diverse range of perspectives in dialogue with British art and history,' Droth said. The museum's annual operating budget of almost $39 million is funded almost entirely from the Paul Mellon endowment, the center's founder who donated his holdings of British art that account for almost 80 percent of its collection. Yale is widely regarded as having the greatest collection of British art outside of Britain, said Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum in London, who views the pairing of Emin and Turner as inspired. 'For a younger generation, Tracey's work and way of talking about difficult and uncomfortable things with complete honesty is probably very resonant,' Cullinan said, referring to topics such as abortion, surviving abuse and working-class struggles. 'I think that there was a lot of snobbery around those conversations and an attempt to shut them down as being embarrassing or vulgar,' Cullinan added, noting how the art establishment had put Emin in a box early on. 'Now we recognize that those are not just important, but necessary.'
Forbes
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Yale Center For British Art Reopening In New Haven, CT
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. The British (artworks) are coming (back)! The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, CT reopens March 29, 2025, following two years of conservation construction, again welcoming the public–for free–to enjoy the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. Renovations to replace the iconic 1977 Louis I. Kahn designed modernist museum's roof, skylights, and lighting systems help safeguard both the building and its artworks. Inside, a full reinstallation of the permanent collection unites the YCBA's historic and contemporary pieces in an uninterrupted chronological sequence. Curators took care in following the lead of where the artworks took them. '(Previously) we tried to use paintings to tell stories, whereas now, we're letting the paintings tell the story, a slight reversal of emphasis,' Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director at the Yale Center for British Art, told The YCBA's core collection and landmark building were a gift to Yale University from the collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class of 1929). What stories are the paintings telling? A 'challenging' story in Droth's words. Visitors will find more than arcadian Constable landscapes and genteel Gainsborough portraits of aristocrats. 'The history of the British Empire, obviously, involved Britain spreading its footprint, moving into other countries, colonizing other countries, and exploiting other places,' Droth said. 'An example of a painting that tells that story is an early depiction of the island of Barbados that shows the island having been colonized by the British and having been turned into a sugar colony through the production of slave labor, and you can see it in the painting. So when I say challenging, it's to acknowledge that a lot of the art that was made over five centuries tell the story of all aspects of what Britain was about, politically, globally, economically.' Global is another point of emphasis. Britain was and is an empire once so vast it was famously said the sun never set on it. 'British art' was created by artists born in Britain who left to work in Europe and around the world as well as by artists from Europe and around the world who came to work in Britain. Almost half the works on view were made by artists not born in Britain or artists who left Britain to make their careers elsewhere. 'There's a lot of movement that is simply part of the history of British art and part of the collection that we have; it's inherently an international story rather than an island story,' Droth said. The new installation places iconic works such as John Constable's paintings of rural England alongside never-before exhibited works from the founding collection, such as William Daniell's newly conserved A View in China: Cultivating the Tea Plant (ca. 1810). Other highlights include classic treasures by George Stubbs and Thomas Gainsborough alongside bold works by contemporary artists such as Cecily Brown, bridging centuries through shared themes and formal explorations. New acquisitions also allow the Center to show the vital role that women played in the history of British art, with major works by Mary Beale, Maria Spilsbury, and Emma Soyer. J. M. W. Turner, 'Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne: Morning,' ca. 1845, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Born 250 years ago this year, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was one of the most virtuosic and complex artists of the 19th century. Many consider him the greatest British artist ever. Many go further than that, calling him the forbearer of Impressionism and nothing less than the father of Modern art. The YCBA reopens with a special exhibition, 'J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality,' (through July 27, 2025) the first show there focusing on Turner in more than 30 years. 'We have an amazing Turner collection. We don't just have a handful of paintings by Turner, we have almost 3,000 works by Turner including works on paper and prints and drawings and sketchbooks,' Droth said. 'We can trace his whole career through our collection. He started with careful topographical drawings. He trained in how to draw architecture and ruins and classical landscapes. Then you can see him developing his style and becoming very interested in the quality of light and the sky. You can see his style evolve.' The one-time child prodigy's style evolved over a 60-year career into the revolutionary landscape paintings for which those 'father of Impressionism' and 'first Modern artist' plaudits were applied. 'By the time you get to the end (of his life), some of the paintings that he made almost dissolve into close to abstraction,' Droth explained. 'Interestingly, they still show place, but you wouldn't necessarily know it, because it's become so ethereal and so much about the atmosphere of water and sky and clouds.' 'Romance and Reality' features the YCBA's most iconic Turner oil paintings alongside outstanding watercolors and prints, and the artist's only complete sketchbook outside of the British Isles. Together they reveal his astounding technical skill and the powerful combination of profound idealism with his acute awareness of the tragic realities of human life. Tracey Emin, 'You Kept it Coming,' 2019, acrylic on canvas, private collection. Reopening the Center with Turner was an obvious choice. A companion solo exhibition for Tracey Emin (b. 1963), perhaps less so. Not to Droth. 'As the Yale Center for British Art, we're very conscious that we are a center of the whole story of British art,' she said. 'Some people might be familiar with Turner, and some people might be familiar more with contemporary art. We tell the whole story, and we can put an artist like Tracey Emin into a historical context. Tracey Emin is one of the foremost artists working in Britain today. She has never had a solo museum exhibition in the United States.' That fact is astonishing considering Emin's been a leading transatlantic voice in contemporary art since the 1990s. Many of the paintings on view in the show have never been shown in a museum anywhere. 'A lot of people have heard of Tracey Emin, but you rarely see her work in museums,' Droth said. 'You might see a neon, or you might see one of her applique blanket works, but you never see her work in quantity and her paintings have been overlooked. Our mission is to be a place that introduces this culture into North America.' Emin explores deeply personal experiences confronting timely issues about female sexuality and women's bodies. Her paintings lay bare intimate and private experiences that veer from the prosaic to the most profound and life-affirming aspects of being a woman. Through her raw portrayal of the female form, Emin challenges traditional depictions of women in art, centering instead on the authenticity of lived experience. In layman's terms, she keeps it real. Emin's paintings may initially strike visitors as provocative. 'I find her paintings less and less provocative and more and more, not about provoking, but about processing an experience,' Droth said. 'She offers us a way of thinking about how we process emotions from ordinary things that happen–from love, from grief, from feeling abandoned–all those things that happen to each of us, that we process internally. I find her paintings are her way of externalizing that and creating these universal things.' Droth hopes people take the time with Emin's work to move past first impressions. 'I'm drawn in by paintings you can read in multiple ways, paintings that evoke feelings and emotions; you're trying to work out what you're looking at. I'm hoping this will happen when people go to the show, they take time,' she said. 'The more time you spend with (Emin's paintings), the more they give you.' Emin and Turner do have more in common than their nationality and profession. Both were shaped by time spent in the coastal town of Margate. Turner had a fascination with the sea bordering on fetish. The sketchbook on view in 'Romance and Reality,' his 1845 'Channel Sketchbook,' was used on the artist's last journey across the English Channel and contains views of the coastline around Margate where he spent much time during his childhood and old age. Emin was raised and continues spending part of each year in Margate. 'The way Tracey described it, Turner and her shared this history in Margate where they spent significant parts of their career. She said, 'I'm looking at a sunset; Turner looked at the same sunset. We looked at the same ocean over this long period of time,'' Droth explained. 'She wants to see herself as coming out of a British tradition of art making, and painting in particular. I don't want to overplay the connection between them, but again, it's about saying that there is a history of British art here over the centuries and Turner and Emin exemplify those two ends of the spectrum.' 'Tracey Emin: I Loved You Until The Morning' can be seen through August 10, 2025.
Boston Globe
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
30 can't-miss arts events in Boston and around New England this spring
Marking the beloved, bombastic British painter's 250th birthday, this exhibition brings together dozens of works from the Yale collection. Comprising an array of Turner's beguiling watercolors alongside major oil paintings such as Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed, 1818 (he had a knack for titles), it's the biggest airing of the collection in decades. Details: March 29-July 27, Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven; 877-274-8278, Advertisement Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits Vincent van Gogh met few successes in his short, unhappy life, but between 1888 and 1889, he was as content as he'd ever been. In the French town of Arles, he found peace in the friendship of Joseph Roulin and his family. A collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the show brings together some 20 portraits made in that moment, and a glimpse of a famously tortured artist momentarily calmed. Details: March 30-September 7, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston; 617-267-9300, Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up "Demons" by Martine Gutierrez from Bowdoin College Museum of Art exhibition. From Martine Gutierrez and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York Reimagining Our Américas: Empathy and Activism Beyond Borders A North-South, bi-hemispheric exhibition featuring such well-known contemporary artists as Graciela Iturbide and Meryl McMaster, Reimagining Our Américas examines how art can function both as a mechanism of resistance and a bulwark of hope. With works from Indigenous artists from North and South America and Black artists from the vast trans-Atlantic African diaspora, the show crosses borders and media from photography, drawing, and video to unite marginalized people in the common purpose of being seen and heard in a shambolic, post-Colonial world. Details: March 20-November 9, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 9400 College Station, Brunswick, Maine; 207-725-3275, Making A Noise: Indigenous Sound Art A slate of interactive works using ceramics and textiles is brought to sonorous life in this exhibition of contemporary art. That present-minded expression echoes, if you'll pardon the pun, ancient traditions, as artists such as Kite, who is Oglála Lakhóta, evoke connections across millennia. Details: June 21-October 26, Shelburne Museum, 6000 Shelburne Road, Shelburne, Vermont; 802- 985-3346, Advertisement "Jingle Cone Chainmail" by Chelsea Bighorn from Making a Noise: Indigenous Sound Art. From Chelsea Bighorn Chiharu Shiota: 'Home Less Home' A project for the Institute of Contemporary Art's summertime Watershed in East Boston, Shiota's mass-scale installations explore migration and the delicate nature of home — both making and losing one. At the Watershed, a vast grid of red and black ropes will suspend such objects as suitcases, passports, and even furniture, underscoring the precariousness of uprooting, and the challenge of finding new ground. Details: May 22-September 1, ICA Watershed, 256 Marginal Street, East Boston; 617-478-3100, "Accumulation-Searching for the Destination" by Chiharu Shiota. Photograph by Sunhi Mang. Boston Public Art Triennial Ready or not, an age-old city is about to get a brand-new look with more than a dozen new public art projects dotting downtown from May 22 to October 31. For a town predicated on permanent monuments, this inaugural installation of fleeting public works will be a blast of fresh air — and a view into just as fresh possibilities for the city's cultural landscape. Details: Various locations around Boston; 617-982-3860, — Murray Whyte BOOKS Bookstock Bookstock, an annual beloved tradition, takes over Woodstock, Vermont's iconic Village Green with a blend of author readings, live music, and a massive sale of new and used books. This year's lineup will include poetry heavy hitters Robert Pinsky, former national poet laureate, and Major Jackson, poetry editor at the Harvard Review. Details: May 16-18, Village Green, Woodstock, Vermont; A book signing at Bookstock, which takes place May 16-18 this year. Jeanna Shepard Photography Maine Romance Writers Retreat Whether you're an experienced author or a fan thinking of diving into romance writing, this is the event for you. The weekend of workshops and networking includes talks about everything from finding your voice to crafting the perfect villain to creating rom-coms that appeal to Gen-Z readers. Details: May 17-18, Embassy Suites, 1050 Westbrook Street, Portland, Maine; Advertisement StokerCon Welcome to everything horror! Sponsored by the Horror Writers Association and named after Dracula author Bram Stoker, this annual convention is packed with workshops, panels, and vendors of ghoulish wares. Guests this year include Tim Waggoner, Adam L. G. Nevill, and the alarmingly prolific Joyce Carol Oates. Details: June 12-15, Hilton Stamford Hotel, 1 First Stamford Place, Stamford, Connecticut; 603 Writers' Conference Held every summer by the New Hampshire Writers' Project, this one-day conference (named for the local area code) offers workshops and panels on the craft of writing and the business of publication. The day concludes with a pitch party for aspiring authors to tout and test their projects. This year's keynote author is thriller legend Tess Gerritsen. Details: June 14, Southern New Hampshire University, Banquet Hall, 2500 North River Road, Manchester, New Hampshire; 603-270-5466, Friends of the C.H. Booth Library Book Sale This year marks the 49th book sale to support the C. H. Booth Library in Newtown, Connecticut. Considered one of the largest and most well-run book sales in the country, the event features everything from rare first editions to all the latest graphic novels and manga. Includes CDs and vinyl records for the collectors in your life. Details: July 11-15, Reed Intermediate School, 3 Trades Lane, Newtown, Connecticut; The Friends of the C.H. Booth Library Book Sale will be held July 11-15 in Newtown, Connecticut. Handout Martha's Vineyard Book Festival Launched in 2005, the festival has become a powerhouse that attracts some of the buzziest authors to its panels and readings. Among the confirmed presenters this summer are authors Danzy Senna and Evan Osnos, journalist Jonathan Capehart, and political commentator Chris Hayes. After a ticketed keynote on Friday evening, all of the events on Saturday and Sunday are free to the public. Details: August 1-3, Various locations in Chilmark; Advertisement — Kate Tuttle CLASSICAL MUSIC Boston Symphony Orchestra The BSO premieres Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra, a suite of the legendary jazz saxophonist's works in arrangements by composer chair Carlos Simon (March 21-22). Later in the spring, the orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons present Decoding Shostakovich, a monthlong festival examining the Russian composer's complex relationship to the politics of his era (April 10-May 3). Details: Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston; 888-266-1200, Carlos Simon, the BSO's composer chair Aram Boghosian A Far Cry The conductorless string orchestra, now in its 18th season, presents 'For' Seasons, a program that interweaves Vivaldi's always-popular The Four Seasons (marking its 300th anniversary this year) with newer works that throw fresh light on our relationship to nature. Details: Groton Hill Music Center, 122 Old Ayer Road, Groton (March 28), and Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston (March 29); 617-553-4887, Sphinx Virtuosi The flagship ensemble of the diversity-minded Sphinx Organization presents American Form/s, a kaleidoscopic program of new and old American music that draws on elements of ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, and soul. Details: March 30, Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross, 1 College Street, Worcester; 508-793-3874, Sphinx Virtuosi presents "American Form/s" at Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross. Scott Jackson Trio Mediaeval The three voices of Trio Mediaeval create a sound of translucent beauty. The group closes Newport Classical's Chamber Series with a program of traditional Norwegian and Swedish hymns, folk songs, and ballads. Details: June 13, Newport Classical Recital Hall, 42 Dearborn Street, Newport, Rhode Island; 401-846-1133, On June 13, Trio Mediaeval plays in Newport, Rhode Island. Åsa Maria Mikkelsen Symphony NH Roger Kalia concludes his tenure as the long-running orchestra's music director with an all-American program that includes Gershwin's familiar Rhapsody in Blue and Florence Price's less-familiar Piano Concerto in One Movement; Fei-Fei is the soloist for both. Copland's Third Symphony rounds out the program. Details: May 10, Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 South Main Street, Concord, New Hampshire; 603-595-9156, Advertisement Roger Kalia concludes his tenure as Symphony NH's music director in May. Handout Vermont Symphony Orchestra The VSO's season finale opens with two vibrant, recently composed works by female composers: Alexandra du Bois's Fanfare and Jocelyn Morlock's My Name Is Amanda Todd. The second half is given over to Mahler's epic First Symphony. Music director Andrew Crust conducts. Details: May 10, The Flynn, 153 Main Street, Burlington, Vermont; 802-863-5966, — David Weininger THEATER 'The Victim' The reliably excellent Annette Miller stars in the premiere of a play by Lawrence Goodman built on three interconnected monologues. One is by a Holocaust survivor looking for ways to heal; one is by a physician whose racial diversity training has taken a dreadfully wrong turn; and one is by a home health aide dealing with racism in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Details: June 19-July 20, Shakespeare & Company, Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox; 413-637-3353, 'Too Fat for China' An eye-opening solo show written, directed, and performed by comedian Phoebe Potts about her disastrous attempt at a US adoption and her subsequent journey through the maze-like complexity of international adoption. Potts finds room for humor in recounting her experiences, while also not pulling any punches about the disquieting aspects of the process. Details: April 9-13, Lost Nation Theater, 39 Main Street, Montpelier; 802-229-0492, Comedian Phoebe Potts performs "Too Fat for China" in Montpelier in April. Handout 'The Squirrels' Call it a tale of haves and have-nots — or, perhaps, the have-nuts and have-nots. From playwright Robert Askins ( Hand to God) comes this story of the epic conflict that erupts when a group of fox squirrels, near starvation, asks a group of gray squirrels to share its hoard of nuts. 'We're going to bite and claw and scratch until today looks like yesterday,' says the leader of the gray squirrels. Any resemblance to present-day humans is purely intentional in this allegory about inequality and political polarization, directed by Brooks Reeves. Details: April 18-May 18, Apollinaire Theatre Company, Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet Street, Chelsea; 617-887-2336, Audrey Johnson and Parker Jennings in "The Squirrels." Handout 'Blues for an Alabama Sky' In this drama by Springfield-born Pearl Cleage, five friends negotiate the cross-currents of the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression in the summer of 1930: Angel, a singer who's just been fired by the Cotton Club; Leland, a widower smitten with Angel; Guy, a gay costume designer who dreams of designing clothes for Josephine Baker; Delia, a staff member at Margaret Sanger's new family planning clinic in Harlem; and Sam, a jazz-loving physician. Directed by Jackie Davis. Details: May 29-June 29, Trinity Repertory Company, 201 Washington Street, Providence; 401-351-4242, 'Learning How to Read by Moonlight' Natsu Onoda Power directs the premiere of Gaven D. Trinidad's drama about the struggles of an undocumented Filipino family in a hostile political environment shaped by two presidents: Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Donald Trump in America. We see the story through the eyes of a 6-year-old boy who is learning English from an imaginary friend. Coproduction by Company One Theatre and CHUANG Stage. Details: At Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street, from May 16-24, then at Pao Arts Center, 99 Albany Street, Boston, from May 29-June 1; 617-292-7110, 'Hurricane Diane' Madeleine George's incisive and boisterously funny play, directed by Zoë Golub-Sass, is a parable about climate change and the perils of interfering with nature. Diane of the title is the Greek god Dionysus, having assumed the guise of a lesbian landscaper from Vermont, and she's on a mission to restore the earth 'to its natural state.' Details: June 5-29, Hartford Stage, 50 Church Street, Hartford; 860-527-5151, — Don Aucoin DANCE Complexions Contemporary Ballet Led by former Alvin Ailey stars Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, the company carries that rich legacy into an expansive and athletic approach to contemporary ballet. For this production, the troupe brings a mix of its signature repertoire plus the social consciousness-themed 2019 work Woke, set to the music of Kendrick Lamar, Logic, Drake, and others. Details: April 11, Merrill Auditorium, 20 Myrtle Street, Portland, Maine; 207-773-3150, Complexions Contemporary Ballet will perform at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine. Rachel Neville Boston Ballet's Winter Experience 2025 This stellar program is bookended by two George Balanchine masterpieces that highlight the choreographer's enormous range — the Stravinsky-scored neoclassic Symphony in Three Movements and one of the last great ballets he created before his death, Mozartiana. In between are Claudia Schreier's innovative Slipstream and Leonid Yakobson's brilliant solo Vestris. Details: March 20-30, Citizens Opera House, 539 Washington Street, Boston; 617-695-6955, Boston Ballet dress rehearsal. Rosalie O'Connor Urban Bush Women The celebrated groundbreaking company marks 40 years of weaving bold choreographic tapestries that combine contemporary dance, music, and text to highlight the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African diaspora. The anniversary centerpiece is This is Risk, which showcases four decades of combining art and social activism — looking back and forging ahead. Details: March 21-23, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston; 617-478-3100, Hartford Step Off Classic With its percussive synchronized movement and call-and-response elements, stepping's long, rich history has roots in Africa. However, it's been popularized as a tradition in African-American fraternities and sororities around the United States. This showcase competition offers Greek and community teams the opportunity to demonstrate their best moves and 'Reign Over the Yard.' Details: April 12, Bushnell Auditorium, 166 Capitol Avenue, Hartford; 860-987-5900, 'The Center Will Not Hold' Created by tapper extraordinaire Michelle Dorrance and choreographer Ephrat Asherie, this new production features the two dancers plus members of Dorrance Dance Company and live original music composed by Donovan Dorrance (the Dorrances are siblings). Expect everything from hip-hop to Memphis jookin to body percussion. Details: April 25-26, Global Arts Live At Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont Street, Boston; 617-876-4275, "The Center Will Not Hold" was created by dancer Michelle Dorrance and choreographer Ephrat Asherie. CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN Trisha Brown Dance Company The iconic choreographer was a trailblazer in creating site-specific works placing dance in unusual environments. The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is featuring her 1971 classic Roof Piece to cap its 25th-anniversary-year celebration. The work will be performed throughout the MASS MoCA campus. DO look up! Details: May 24, MASS MoCA, 1040 Mass MOCA Way, North Adams; 413-662-2111, MASS MoCA will feature Trisha Brown's 1971 classic "Roof Piece." Vikki Sloviter — Karen Campbell Don Aucoin can be reached at
