Click below to read recent press clippings about the New Bedford Art Museum. When you click on a link, a new browser window will open. To return to this page, simply close that browser window.
January 8, 2010
Waywardness, humor, colors that zing
Call me particular, but colored toilet paper is not my thing. I just don't like the idea. So it's strange for me to have to report that a blue toilet roll is the subject of one of the most arresting paintings I've seen anywhere in months.
The work is in Roger Kizik's retrospective "Disparate Dialogue," a crazy, hyperventilating, intensely likable show at the New Bedford Art Museum. Kizik is based in Dartmouth, has been a notable presence on the New England art scene for more than 30 years, and - not quite incidentally - worked for many years as a preparator at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum. That collection's terrific holdings in postwar abstraction and Pop Art clearly left an indelible mark.
April 23, 2009
Few artists could ever imagine the future impact they might have. Could Mozart have guessed 200 years ago that his name would be synonymous with graceful, inventive music? For that matter, could the anonymous painter who decorated the caves in Lascaux nearly 10,000 years ago have known that those paintings would symbolize the beginning of human creativity?
March 3, 2009
Read a news release about fiscal challenges facing the Museum. [PDF document, 144KB]
March 3, 2009
One of the people credited with helping to bring about downtown's revival as a small-city cultural and entertainment mecca has found herself out of a job, a victim of the economic downturn.
Karie C. Vincent, executive director and chief executive officer of the New Bedford Art Museum, was let go by the museum Sunday as the private, not-for-profit institution wrestles with the loss of a major state grant and a downturn in general giving.
February 3, 2009
As AHA! closes in on its 10th anniversary and 116th AHA! night event, the organization has released a UMass Dartmouth evaluation of its impact, indicating that directly and indirectly it pumps more than a half-million dollars annually into the local economy.
January 8, 2009
Tonight, the fireworks promised on New Year's Eve — delayed by an untimely blizzard — will light the sky over the cobblestone streets of downtown New Bedford's historic district. It is an AHA! night, when dozens of downtown venues celebrate the city's rich legacy of art, history and architecture. But before the fireworks' gaudy glare, the visions of those who have seen or imagined New Bedford in a new way are told both in a triptych of three lectures and in a held-over art show at the New Bedford Art Museum.
November 21, 2008
The New Bedford Art Museum will stage its annual winter fundraiser and holiday tree sale from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 6 at the museum at 608 Pleasant St.
November 16, 2008
Having opened to the public yesterday, a selection of works by Marion artist, Peter C. Stone, is the subject of a special one-month exhibit in the lower vault of the New Bedford Art Museum.
October 15, 2008
Artists chronicle our triumphs and our failures, the beauties that surround us and the ugliness and misfortune that creep into every life. The best artists look unflinchingly at where we live and how, telling truth in ways that can shock, surprise, outrage and comfort us.
"Art," says New Bedford Art Museum Executive Director Karie Vincent, in the catalog that accompanies the exhibition "Home Grown: 10 from the SouthCoast," "is in your daily newspaper."
October 5, 2008
After its planning of two years, the autumn exhibition currently on view at the New Bedford Art Museum (NBAM), titled "HOME GROWN: 10 from the SouthCoast," is now open to the public. As most exhibits are, this was a labor of love for me as its curator, and one I took on with both passion and determination.
October 5, 2008
"Let's face it. There are some pretty unattractive scenes around the Whaling City. But there is a tremendous amount of beauty for those willing to pause and look again. New Bedford taught me how to find enormous pleasure in what formerly got me down"
— Carolyn Swiszcz, in her artist statement for "Home Grown," an exhibition at the New Bedford Art Museum through Dec. 31.
September 30, 2008
Make that "11" from the SouthCoast
By Joe Cohen, staff writer, S-T Blog
A really terrific exhibit opened this past Friday evening at the New Bedford Art Museum on Pleasant Street titled "Home Grown: 10 from the SouthCoast." It is comprised of 10 regional artists working in different mediums and includes photographs by Peter Pereira, a shooter for The Standard-Times (noted in the interest of full disclosure). But, in fact, if you are a tad daring you may find there is a secret 11th exhibit.
Karie C. Vincent, the museum's able and creative executive director, had the walls of the back, left staircase going down to the basement painted in a very cool, jazzy format that makes the staircase unique. It's worth checking out, and an interior decorating idea not seen too often. Ms. Vincent said the back staircase had always seemed a little dank before, but no more.
An additional note of recognition: "Home Grown" was put together by David B. Boyce, curator. The exhibit runs through Dec. 31 and the museum is open daily noon to 5 p.m.
August 24, 2008
Ben Shattuck is a gifted young painter, recently graduated from Cornell University with his BFA in painting. In addition, he has studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and spent a year studying in Rome. Ben is the son of Bill and Dedee Shattuck of South Dartmouth, and has benefited from his parents' deep-seated interests in the arts, and his father's success as a career artist.
August 22, 2008
A battered doll with tangled blond curls and hypnotic blue eyes. A mourning woman seated by the Ganges River, wrapped in fluttering white gauze. Ghostly figures moving among the skeletal remains of the Lincoln Park roller coaster.
Jane Tuckerman's camera reveals glimpses of worlds beyond our own, both earthly and unearthly. In "Haunted," her solo exhibit now on view at the New Bedford Art Museum, photographs and collages of objects and scenes tell tales of the past, presenting physical evidence of lives once lived.
June 21, 2008
The American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA) is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a traveling exhibition of work by more than 100 contemporary marine artists. One of the largest and most ambitious exhibitions of its kind, the show opened at the Chase Center on the Riverfront, in Wilmington, Delaware, on May 16 and is running through July 6 before continuing its tour of other East Coast venues, which concludes in September 2009. Following its stay in Delaware, the show will be on display at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, in St. Michael's, Maryland; The Noyes Museum of Art, in Oceanville, New Jersey; the Spartanburg Art Museum, in Spartanburg, South Carolina; and the New Bedford Art Museum, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. An illustrated catalogue will be available for purchase at each venue, as well as through the society's website.
Dartmouth Chronicle
June 11, 2008
When first walking into Jane Tuckerman's art studio in South Dartmouth one feels an overwhelming sense of intrigue drawn from all her worldly treasures.
Retrofitted from an old church, Ms. Tuckerman's studio is stuffed with dolls, figurines, and crafts from around the globe, all varying in sizes and shapes the way New England rocks do in a field.
March 20, 2008
You can go on an Easter egg hunt of sorts by visiting the New Bedford Art Museum this weekend.
Among the beautiful, intriguing and historical artifacts on display in "Paper Cuts, Pottery and Primitives: Polish Folk and Decorative Arts," is a collection of decorated Easter eggs representing a number of variations on the craft.
February 15, 2008
To explain his choice of colors and patterns, landscape painter Severin Haines says simply, "Nature is the teacher."
December 21, 2007
"There's always a story inside a piece of wood."
Furniture artist Stephen Whittlesey, whose latest series is currently on view in a solo show at the New Bedford Art Museum, believes his task is to tap into that story.
November 29, 2007
It's Christmastime in the city — and the city celebrates five of its holiday traditions this weekend:
- The New Bedford Art Museum's seventh annual Festival of Trees gala begins at 6 p.m. Saturday.
August 21, 2007
The New Bedford Art Museum's current show, "Charles Henry Gifford, 1839-1904: An Artist's Journey," is a revealing exhibit on many levels.
It is the biography of a prolific painter whose work depicts the seaside views that thrilled him as a boy growing up in Fairhaven. It is an artistic chronicle of the two faces of the ocean, its rolling waves and its stormy fury.
It is a glimpse into the history of New Bedford, documenting scenes of the whaling industry in its final years. It is a lesson in the style and techniques of landscape painting in the mid- to late-19th century, displaying the artist's tools and demonstrating the traditional stages of an oil painting from detailed studies to finished canvas.
July 1, 2007
Twenty years ago, a review by Vivien Raynor appeared in The New York Times with the lead, "There used to be only two 19th-century Giffords to consider — the well-known Sanford Robinson (1823 to 1880) and the comparatively obscure Robert Swain (1840 to 1905). Now there are three, because the work of Charles Henry Gifford (1839 to 1904), uncovered by the historian John I. H. Baur, is having its first major exposure in the show that has just arrived at the Katonah Gallery from the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts."
Dartmouth Chronicle
June 21, 2007
Charles Henry Gifford exhibit is a rare treat for marine art lovers
FAIRHAVEN — Looking at his painting and sketches, it is easy to imagine Charles Henry Gifford (1839-1904) prowling the shipyards along the 1840's Fairhaven waterfront as a young boy, watching the oaken skeletons of future whaling ships taking shape at the hands of skilled carpenters like his father, Benjamin.
You can just as easily imagine the young artist sketching the work in progress on a scrap of paper, taking careful note how the ribs were being joined to the massive keel, soon to be covered with planking and caulked tight against the intrusion of the seas they would soon be sailing.
Sailing ships of all kinds are the predominant subject of "An Artist's Journey—" the watercolors, oil paintings, charcoal sketches and studies by Gifford being exhibited through Aug. 31 at the New Bedford Art Museum— although a few work skiffs, whaleboats, long boats and a steamship or two are mixed in with the whalers, schooners, ketches, and racing yachts he so loved to draw and paint.
March 7, 2007
The four artists in the New Bedford Art Museum's current exhibit have a lot in common. All four use the figure as their subject. All four work in a realistic style. All four work on a life-sized scale. And all four are professors in UMass Dartmouth's fine art department, a program that stresses observational drawing from life.
March 2, 2007
An outstanding show of contemporary art is on view through May 6 at the New Bedford Art Museum. “Humanly Possible: Four Figurative Artists,” features drawing, painting and sculpture by Pamela Hoss, Laurie Kaplowitz, Anne Leone and Stacy Latt Savage. All are masters of technique and, somewhat daringly for contemporary artists, place the human form at the center of their work.
October 24, 2006
"Masters of Watercolor," now showing in the New Bedford Art Museum's Skylight and Upper Vault galleries, highlights the unexpected beauty found in everyday life.
October 18, 2006
New Bedford art scene is a lively work in progress.
August 22, 2006
Visit the New Bedford Art Museum on a Thursday evening through Sept. 14 to hear artists, curators and the public explore "Inviting Response: Celebrating Our First Decade."
August 21, 2006
Of all the things you can do in the city this summer, few are more enlightening than a visit to the New Bedford Art Museum to marvel at the wonders of its 10th anniversary show. The show intersperses the priceless collections of the Whaling Museum, including such muses as the young city's first iron-tired bicycle, together with reinterpretations by working city artists.
July 22, 2006
One of the area's most extraordinary gardens will host the New Bedford Art Museum's fund-raising gala "The Garden Party" on Saturday, July 29.
July 19, 2006
NBAM to hold its garden fund-raiser in Dartmouth.
July 17, 2006
New Bedford gave its residents a reminder of just how much talent it has at the New Bedford Art Museum's 10th birthday party.
July 14, 2006
The New Bedford Art Museum is one of those treasures in our back,yard worthy of a visit this summer.
June 24, 2006
New Bedford Art Museum celebrates a decade of creativity.
June 8, 2006
'Vault Series: New and Review' pays tribute to NBAM anniversary.
June 1, 2006
NBAM turns 10 with exhibit that pairs old and new.
March 19 , 2006
10 Who Matter: Recreation, Culture & Leisure (Karie Vincent)
March 19 , 2006
Vital Signs: Arts organizations stroke economic hopes of a city with a storied past
