Boston Globe -- Sebastian Smee

The tastemaker

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-11-18T16:44:01Z

NEW HAVEN - He was, according to one 19th-century reviewer, “the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most capricious, of men.’’ By others he was described as arrogant, tetchy, jealous, and snobbish. But Horace Walpole was also, despite the many pejoratives pinged his way, one of the most important and transforming figures in British culture.

Critic's picks - visual arts

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-11-14T18:23:12Z

THE ROSE AT BRANDEIS: WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION A selection of highlights from the Rose’s top-drawer collection of modern and contemporary art from Europe and America. Through May 23. The Rose Art Museum, Waltham. 781-736-3434, www.brandeis.edu/rose

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2009-11-14T18:23:12Z

Rose Art Museum display justifies the passions

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-11-05T07:28:30Z

For almost a year, the news out of Brandeis University about its Rose Art Museum has been dismaying.

Theater of war

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-31T16:47:32Z

ou have to imagine it, because you’re not going to see it. You will, however, hear it. And what your ears will tell you is that you’re inside a room, perhaps a coffeehouse, and that you are somewhere in Iraq. You will hear the babbling of a TV and, outside, the sounds of market haggling and the chants of an ...

In the moment

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-31T01:37:40Z

NEW HAVEN - Everything that is most endearing about the current state of contemporary art and much that niggles rises to the surface of “Continuous Present,’’ an ambitious show of 12 internationally acclaimed artists at Yale University Art Gallery. The two responses do not reflect incoherence: On the contrary, the show, which explores time and perception with a Zen-like emphasis ...

Blunt instruments

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-29T16:29:14Z

CAMBRIDGE - “With 42,000 dead, ART is not enough,’’ says a 1988 poster by the artist collective Gran Fury calling for collective action to end the AIDS crisis. The message strikes a discordant note in “ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993’’ at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, since the point of the ...

Critic's picks - visual arts

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-24T16:56:15Z

CONTINUOUS PRESENT Ten internationally renowned contemporary artists, including Dieter Roth, Roni Horn, On Kawara, and Gabriel Orozco, deal with themes of time and perception. Through Jan. 3. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. 203-432-0600. www.artgallery.yale.edu

Critic's picks - visual arts

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-17T17:17:09Z

FIRST HAND: CIVIL WAR ERA DRAWINGS FROM THE BECKER COLLECTION More then 130 drawings by artist-reporters during the Civil War. Through Dec. 13. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College. 617-552-8100, www.bc.edu/artmuseum

‘Tomb 10A’ lets you look history right in the face

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-17T17:16:21Z

There are some things that bring the ancient Egyptians closer to us, and some that make them seem further away. Their religious beliefs, for instance, can be dauntingly arcane. And hieroglyphics, too, are hard to parse. But when Djehutynakht, a governor in Middle Kingdom Egypt, informs us that he has no wish to spend eternity eating his own excrement, I ...

Unfinished business

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-10T16:54:20Z

NEW YORK - Less than three weeks after Hyman Bloom died in late August at 96, a show of his paintings and drawings opened at the Yeshiva University Museum here. At the opening were many who knew him: collectors, curators, friends, family.

Studying ‘The Daughters’

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-10T00:59:59Z

John Singer Sargent’s “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit’’ is one of the most popular paintings in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Erica Hirshler has been looking at it - and watching the reactions of other people looking at it - for over 30 years. A senior curator of American paintings at the MFA, she has now written a book, ...

Life during wartime

Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff — 2009-10-05T04:24:06Z

Reading most accounts of war, you could almost think that it made sense. From historians, we’re liable to learn that these troops led by these generals engaged in these maneuvers with the help of these supply lines, resulting in either victory or defeat.