The Rogovoy Report 6.26.23

From around the corner to around the globe...

Jun 25, 2023

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REQUIRED READING

The Case Against Travel

(New Yorker) - Travel gets branded as an achievement: see interesting places, have interesting experiences, become interesting people. Is that what it really is? Pessoa, Emerson, and Chesterton believed that travel, far from putting us in touch with humanity, divorced us from it. Travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best. Call this the traveller’s delusion.

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The art of being a flâneur (NYT)

Octopus Farming: ‘A symbol of what humans shouldn’t be doing’ (The Guardian)

This year might be the worst tick season ever. Here's why. (Time)

Disbelief and anger among Greek shipwreck victims’ relatives as millions spent on Titan rescue effort (The Guardian)

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Edvard Munch, "The Magic Forest," 1919-25, oil on canvas.

In ‘Trembling Earth’ at The Clark, Munch’s Prescient View of Nature in Peril

(Boston Globe) WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Edvard Munch was deeply attuned to the natural world, something the overwhelming, overly broad presence of his iconic painting, “The Scream,” all but obscures in the public imagination. “Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth,” an exhibition of more than 70 of his landscapes and nature scenes at the Clark Art Institute, opens the door wide to the particular anxieties of an artist wound tight by the growing presence of a rapidly industrializing world. Munch wasn’t the first to use landscape as a mirror to the soul. But has anyone done it so vividly, and with such conviction?

New Study Reveals Overworked, Underpaid 'Invisible Underclass' Behind Berkshires Curtains

(Berkshire Eagle) - A new study concludes that three-quarters of arts and culture workers in the Berkshires report unpaid overtime and that as many as half do not have common benefits like health insurance or paid time off. Their wages don’t buy what they need to function, including housing. Those surveyed describe employers that posture “enlightenment” to the public, yet operate on the backs of the underpaid, and the oft-affluent board members of these institutions as tone deaf to their plight. One worker surveyed in the study said they “rarely visit other art organizations because they are beyond my budget.”

Spanish architect Antonio Torrecillas transformed the historic building into a modern cultural center (courtesy The School)

Jack Shainman Gallery’s The School in Kinderhook, N.Y., Boasts Berkshire Roots

(Berkshire Edge) KINDERHOOK, N.Y. - On a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in mid-May, The School — art dealer Jack Shainman Gallery’s free-to-the-public exhibition space in Kinderhook, N.Y. — held its opening reception for the exhibition, Michael Snow: A Life Survey (1955-2020). It was hard to find parking in Kinderhook that day, as cars and buses flooded in from New York City and the surrounding region. Jack Shainman grew up in the 1960s and ’70s in Williamstown, Mass. His father was a music professor at Williams College and co-founder of the Williamstown Theatre Festival—creating the perfect inspiration for Shainman’s broad-minded arts and humanities perspective. When not riding horses - his first passion -- Shainman spent the rest of his spare time at Williamstown’s Clark Art Institute, captivated by Madonnas, martyrs, and other religious artwork. He began buying art from Williams students and developed a love of art and travel, exploring different cultures on his father’s sabbaticals.

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At Tanglewood, Steve Miller Band serves up hits, blues, psychedelia and ingenious guitar licks (Berkshire Eagle)

‘Cabaret’ brilliant, disturbing at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield (ATU)

Jacob's Pillow, PS21 linked in dance, innovation, season (ATU)

Kristy Edmunds brings an artist's creative and problem-solving skills to her role as director of MASS MoCA (B Eagle)

Darlingside’s ‘Right Friend’ a pensive ode to friendship (WBUR)

From downtown Pittsfield to midtown Manhattan: Jim’s House of Shoes finds new life on an off-Broadway stage (B Eagle)

Old automotive garage in Monterey gets new life as art gallery (B Edge)

Berkshire Busk summer performance festival returns to downtown Great Barrington (B Eagle)

Emerson String Quartet bids Tanglewood adieu (B Eagle)

Teen singer/songwriter sets sail from Australia for Berkshire Busk’s opening weekend on July 1 (Berkshire Edge)

Summer art exhibitions in the Hudson Valley (ATU)

Borscht Belt Museum chronicles history of iconic 20th-century Catskills resorts (Daily Freeman)

Berkshires Defaced with Neo-Nazi Signs and Banners

(Berkshire Eagle) - What is going on here? Weeks after a Jewish teacher at Lee Elementary School said he would resign due to what he described as indifference among school administrators over antisemitic images in student art projects and a Jewish teacher in Dalton resigned after a very similar situation, wherein a student harassed him with antisemitic remarks and a hand-drawn picture of Adolf Hitler, Berkshire residents awoke to a county papered with signs, banners, and flyers promoting the so-called Patriot Front US, a white supremacist group. The handmade signs were spotted last Sunday and Monday in North Adams, Becket, Lee and near the Pittsfield-Lenox line. Patriot Front US is an extremist group founded in 2017 that promotes fascism and the creation of a white ethnostate. Patriot Front is the most prominent white supremacist group in the country, encouraged by the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the outsize volume of their posts on social media.

READ MORE:

Pay equity study calls for better compensation in arts sector (iBerkshires)

Great Barrington’s library system ‘in a real crisis’ (Berkshire Edge)

‘Mission accomplished,’ Du Bois Center in Great Barrington closes (B Edge)|

Housatonic Water Works seeks a 200 percent rate increase for discolored, potentially hazardous water (B Eagle)

Holmes Road, major route between Lenox and Pittsfield, closed for two months for major bridge reconstruction project (B Eagle)

NEWS FROM THE HUDSON VALLEY

A sample of Geoffrey Good's bespoke jewelry

Hudson Artisan Geoffrey Good Creates Bespoke Jewelry with Sentiment and Significance

(Forbes) HUDSON, N.Y. - When Geoffrey Good finally opened his workshop in Hudson, he followed his own aesthetic of balancing a reverence for his classical training and the ability to distill complicated patterns and ornate designs into a simple idea or form. “Minimalism powerfully resonates with me, and there is perhaps a slightly subversive aspect to going against what some would say is the very purpose of jewelry. I love a saying by the author Mokokoma Mokhonoana: “A minimalist does not charge you for what he did. He charges you for what he did not do.” He continues, “I’d much rather highlight the beauty of a single stone than throw it together with lots of others, and I think there is great power in restraint. I like to think of my work in 360 degrees; my earrings they should be just as attractive when a woman passes by as when she is standing in front of me.”

READ MORE:

NYS Supreme Court rules in favor of Hudson against Colarusso & Sons' waterfront operation in Hudson (GoR)

Focus on greener Hudson in new city plan (HV360)

Accused sex abuser in Hudson who was charged with two counts of first-degree rape and three counts of first-degree sexual abuse gets 5 years probation on one count of second-degree stalking; no jail time, walks free (HV360)

Overprotective falcon stakes claim on Rip Van Winkle Bridge over Hudson (HV360)

GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM: Marijuana convention allegedly draws hundreds; newspaper neglects to say where event took place (HV360)

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