THINGS TO DO
The arts are alive by Michael J. DeCicco
The New Bedford Whaling Museum’s 2021 premiere event, the Moby-Dick Marathon (January 8-10), will be presented virtually this year. But the Museum’s curators are proud to note the rest of its programming is not. “A City for the Arts: Masterworks of Greater New Bedford” will be the museum’s main ongoing art exhibit, open now through May 2021, said Tina Mallot, director of Marketing and Public Relations. This exhibit is fairly unique in that it is honoring not only the masterworks and great artists of the city’s past, she said, “but we are also celebrating the vibrant arts community and talented artists of today. It is a living exhibition meaning that it will continue to grow in depth and significance as visitors, artists, and others contribute their responses and reactions to the show.” The “A City for the Arts” exhibit will couple historic masterworks with contemporary pieces by local living artists, she elaborated. Among the many artists whose work will be displayed include William Bradford, Albert Bierstadt,
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Clement Nye Swift, Frances Gifford, and Huguette Desault May. “It will share contemporary artists’ reflections on the master artists of the past,” she explained, “as responses to the masterworks within the exhibition, and commentary on how contemporary artists see their role in the region’s artistic landscape. Meanwhile, local artist Ryan Mcfee is currently working on a mural portrait of a whale and her calf within the exhibition.
The New Bedford Whaling Museum’s “A City for the Arts” exhibit will couple historic masterworks with contemporary pieces by local living artists
January 2021 | The South Coast Insider
It will be found within the Wattles Family fine arts Gallery on the first floor. “A City for the Arts” aims to celebrate and support local artists - the voices that interpret, explore, and represent the soul of our city,” added Christina Connett Brophy, Ph.D., The Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Chair for the Chief Curator. “Their work continues to resonate, reverberate, and inspire, as did the work of great artists from the past. Now more than ever, and when we need it most, the arts bring this city together. “It celebrates the tremendous impact the Greater New Bedford region has had on American fine art through the centuries and continuing today,” Mallot added in the press release announcing the event. It “brings together in one gallery some of the most stunning pieces from the Whaling Museum’s collections, and artworks from private collections,” she said. “These include 19th and 20th century masterworks as well as recently acquired pieces by contemporary local artists.” The entire exhibition will also be in an online gallery beginning in January, and the museum is encouraging people to
