Dave Read

Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass. has scheduled the world premiere of M.C. Escher: Seeing the Unseen, an exhibition of the work of M.C. Escher, to open Jan. 22, 2011. This will be a major exhibition curated by Berkshire Museum that includes major loans from the Boston Public Library and Escher collectors and gallerists.

M.C. Escher: Seeing the Unseen provides a full-on experience, including an up-close look at several rarely-displayed works, original woodblocks alongside prints hand-made by the artist, hard-to-find prints of many of Escher’s iconic images, and hands-on interactive stations providing the chance for visitors to find the fun in Escher’s technique and explore his innovation in a personal way. Running through Jan. 16, 2011 at the Berkshire Museum is Paper and Light, an installation by Henry Klimowicz.

Barrington Stage Company has scheduled a Holiday Open House, featuring an early appearance by Santa Claus, at its Union Street home in Downtown Pittsfield on Saturday, December 4 from 2:00-4:00 p.m, free admission. Families are welcome to bring cameras to photograph their children with Santa. The theatre and lobby will be decorated with the sights and sounds of the holiday, including Mainstage theatre screenings of Christmas movie favorites. Holiday refreshments will be provided by Dottie’s Coffee Lounge.

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chance to win tickets to “Guys and Dolls”

Barrington Stage will also host a canned food drive during the Holiday Open House to benefit Kitty’s Korner Pantry at the First United Methodist Church, 55 Fenn Street, Pittsfield. The First United Methodist Church is a community partner with BSC’s award-winning Playwright Mentoring Project (PMP). PMP uses facilities at the church for our court-based group run in collaboration with the Berkshire Juvenile Court. Attendees who bring a canned good to the event will have their name entered for a chance to win tickets to the 2011 Mainstage Season Opener, Guys and Dolls.

Barrington Stage Company’s schedule now includes satellite broadcasts of “Live from NY’s 92nd Street Y,” the popular lecture, interview and reading series. Screened at BSC’s Mainstage Theatre in Pittsfield, Mass., the program will give Berkshires audiences the opportunity to participate, via e-mail, in discussions during live broadcasts. The initial series, called Fall 2010 Live from the 92Y, has a general admission ticket price of $10.

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Fall 2010 Live from the 92Y at Barrington Stage Co. schedule

• Steve Martin with Deborah Solomon – Mon., Nov. 29 at 8pm (Interactive)
• Elaine Stritch with Jordan Roth – Mon. Dec. 6 at 8pm (Interactive)
• Elie Wiesel and David Axelrod Discuss the Conference of Nobel Laureates – Mon. Dec. 13 at 8pm (pre-recorded)

Both Steve Martin and Elaine Stritch will be broadcast live via satellite from the 92nd Street Y in New York and will be interactive experiences, as audience members will have the chance, during the live event, to submit questions to the speakers via email. Please note: the Elie Wiesel and David Axelrod lecture is pre-recorded and will not feature an interactive component.

Barrington Stage Company contact info.

• Mainstage: 30 Union Street
• BSC Stage 2: 36 Linden Street (Pittsfield VFW)
• Box Office: 413-236-8888
• Administration: 413-499-5446
• Website: barringtonstage.org

The schedule at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute features The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer, an exhibition that explores how and why Dürer’s visionary imagery remains arresting despite centuries of cultural change. It will be on display at the Williamstown, Mass. museum from November 14, 2010, through March 13, 2011. Considered by many to be the greatest German artist of all time, Albrecht Dürer was celebrated during his lifetime as a painter, printmaker, and writer. His innovative techniques revolutionized printmaking, and his theoretical writings transformed the study of human proportion. Deeply embedded in a tumultuous era of religious reformation and scientific inquiry, Dürer used his art to reflect the spiritual and social preoccupations of his time.

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“Visitors will find monsters, knights, and angels in The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer exhibition, which focuses on Dürer’s fantastic imagination and timeless imagery,” said Michael Conforti, director of the Clark. “The Clark’s collection of works by this Renaissance master is extraordinary, and we are pleased to be presenting seventy-five powerful prints, all from our collection, in the first comprehensive display of these works in more than thirty-five years.”

The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer takes a unique approach to Dürer’s work by organizing his prints in themes that draw parallels to contemporary society: The Apocalypse, Symbolic Space, Battle and Anguish, Gender Anxiety, and Enigma.

Dürer’s Apocalypse series chronicles the end of the world as foretold in the New Testament’s book of Revelation. The fifteen prints that comprise the Apocalypse series are teeming with monsters, devils, angels, and saints from the artist’s fertile imagination. Originally published as a book in 1498, this series of woodcuts echoed the anxieties of a generation during which prophesies of impending doom circulated widely and were encouraged by the sixteenth-century European Christian Church. An original bound copy of the series on loan from the Chapin Library at Williams College is included in the exhibition. Today, these prints maintain their dramatic impact, tapping into our fascination with religious tension and our fear of the beasts that dwell between the realm of the real and unreal.

Dürer strove to create the illusion of three-dimensional space by framing the narrative action within architectural and landscape settings that heighten its subdued drama, particularly in his 1511 series Life of Virgin. The interplay between outside and inside, inclusion and exclusion, earth and heaven, are key to understanding the events that unfold in this series, which records the life of Mary from the courtship of her parents to her assumption into heaven. Unlike the highly emotive, chaotic quality of the Apocalypse woodcuts, these images are calm, contemplative, and earthbound.

Dürer explored the themes of anguish, suffering, and violence throughout history from classical, biblical, and contemporary times, often melding time periods in a single image. Around 1500, Dürer captured the horrors of the religious wars brought on by the Protestant Reformation, Christ’s suffering, and the effects of his crucifixion in images of the Passion. These images were suffused with a sense of anguish that remains as potent today as in Dürer’s time. Similar to the way in which the violent imagery in twenty-first century media mirrors current events, the anguish in Dürer’s images reflected society’s fascination with human suffering.

Dürer’s frequent focus on gender relationships ranged from Adam and Eve, depicting the biblical first couple, to suggestive dream states, to violent and erotic mythological creatures. The anxiety expressed in these prints centers on the perceived power struggle between women and men and the threat of unleashed passions. The shifting meanings of these works are exemplified in their frequently changing titles; the luminous nude Nemesis was titled The Great Fortune in the seventeenth century, and Four Naked Women was referred to as The Four Witches in 1675. The impact of these prints is no less powerful today when gender equality remains a heated issue in every sphere of life.

The enigmatic nature of Dürer’s prints, including Knight, Death and the Devil, Melencolia I, The Desperate Man, and his series of knots has encouraged a wide range of interpretive speculation. Scholarly investigations have incorporated philosophy, popular culture, literature, religious doctrine, and feminist interpretations in attempts to fasten meaning onto these curious images. Symbolism has been the overarching tool used to unlock elements in Dürer’s compositions, but this approach has its limitations. Dürer’s vast imagination allows us to interpret these works anew for each successive generation.

The Clark’s collection of more than 300 Dürer prints is among the finest in North America. The bulk of the collection was acquired in 1968 from the collection of Tomás Joseph Harris, a scholar, artist, and art dealer who served in the British Intelligence during the Second World War. The seventy-five prints included in the exhibition represent the best of the Clark’s Dürer’s holdings: Hercules (1496), the Apocalypse series (1496-1498), Nemesis (c. 1502), Knight, Death and the Devil (1513), Melencolia I (1514), and others.

The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer is proudly presented by Crane & Co.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute contact info

• 225 South Street
• Williamstown, MA 01267
• 413-458-2303
• web: clarkart.edu

Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 2010 Benefit “Sing! Celebrating the Musicals of WTF,” hosted by Lewis Black, is scheduled for Monday, November 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the Prince George Ballroom in New York City. The benefit will feature musical performances from recent WTF productions, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and The Last Goodbye and Where’s Charley?.
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Scheduled to appearance, under the direction of Jessica Stone, are Williamstown veterans Dylan Baker, Nick Blaemire, Celina Carvajal, Kellys Collins, Damon Daunno, Katie Finneran, Christopher Fitzgerald, Michael Friedman, Victor Garber, Jessica Hecht, Joe Mantello, Nicholas Martin, David Turner, Benjamin Walker, as well as members of the 2010 WTF Non-Equity Company.