Worcester’s Salisbury Cultural District

Click to enlarge.

On May 19, 2015, the Massachusetts Cultural Council Board unanimously approved State designation of the Salisbury Cultural District, the city’s first official cultural district.  For Application Team Co-Chairs Erin Williams, Worcester’s Cultural Development Officer and I, this was the culmination of a year long process which required multiple public hearings, approval of a resolution by Worcester City Council in support of the designation, a Memorandum of Understanding between The City of Worcester and Worcester Art Museum as the District’s “lead stakeholder”, an inventory of the district’s cultural assets and annual public events, and well as an extensive application outlining the proposed district’s mission, goals and management structure.  All this while simultaneously wrangling nine Founding Stakeholder institutions and three dozen participating district stakeholders to share a common, collaborative vision.  It was a process!

Worcester’s Salisbury Cultural District is conveniently located near Interstates I-190 and I-290 adjacent to the city’s historic Lincoln Square.  Within a two block radius of this Lincoln Square keystone a dozen historically significant cultural and civic buildings stand. Click to see a map of the Salisbury Cultural District.  The district includes cultural institutions such as: the Worcester Art Museum; the American Antiquarian Society; Tuckerman Hall (home to the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra); the historic Salisbury Mansion; and the main campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).  It includes Institute Park (with its Levenson Concert Stage and Gazebo) and Salisbury Pond (a historic mill pond fed by Mill Brook, one of the water sources for the Blackstone Canal which once connected Worcester to Providence, RI).  The district is home to six Houses of Worship (including the Armenian Church of our Saviour, the oldest Armenian congregation in America); 17 restaurants; 6 specialty galleries/gift shops; over 50 adaptively re-used properties; and 10 National Historic Register buildings.  These entities collectively host over 1000 community events annually.

Free Wi-Fi at WAM

The Member’s Council at the Worcester Art Museum knows how important it is to stay connected while on the go, which is why they sponsor WAM’s free, high speed Wi-Fi connection throughout the entire museum. Stop by and grab a coffee from the Sip Cart and catch up on your favorite blogs, or share your favorite piece in the museum on social media without tapping into your data!

Connecting to our Wi-Fi is easy and doesn’t require a password – just chose the WAM_PUBLIC connection on your device and you’re in.

- Casey Beaupre, Acting Visitor Services Manager

Come to the Japanese Gallery

Come to the Japanese Gallery to contemplate this serene grove of bamboo painted by Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-1799).  Compared to trees in the forest, bamboo is relatively slight and unimposing, but bamboo is remarkably strong and flexible. Its robust root system and ability to bend with the wind allow bamboo to survive storms that topple trees. These features and bamboo’s simple but upright form have made it an enduring Asian symbol of endurance, resilience and integrity.

Read more about Nagasawa Rosetsu's Bamboo

WAM Collections Staff on Twitter

Above: Untitled (Flower Plant), William Henry Hunt (British, 1790-1864), after Simon Watts (British, 1716-possibly 1775), 1827, hand-colored etching on cream wove paper, sheet: 20 x 24.5 cm (7 7/8 x 9 5/8 in.), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Hall James Peterson, 1982.154.

Hello everyone! I’ve introduced myself in past posts, but I must now do so in a more formal method as I’ll be your official collection representative on our Twitter account @WorcesterArt! I’m Sarah Gillis, our Assistant Registrar for Image Management. I catalogue the art, assist with photographing it, and work hard to ensure that our objects and their information get to you via our online collections search.

What will I be tweeting? I’ll share neat objects that I come across while working in our collection stores, what’s going on at other Museums, and other such collection-related events/facts.

I’m thrilled to be joining our Twitter team because I can give you the behind-the-scenes access that visitors only dream of. The fact that I’m surrounded by history every day still boggles my mind, and it’s only fair to share this dream job with you all!

How will you know that I’m posting? Just look for my unique signature handle of –WAMCollections at the end of the tweet.

Visit Worcester Art Museum on Twitter
View our online collections search

- Sarah Gillis, Assistant Registrar for Image Management

Samurai! Murals Live in Lancaster Lobby

When WAM began working with Samurai! guest curator Eric Nakamura, we knew that having a visible public component was a must. Our Lancaster Street Lobby has large, white walls that have been crying out for ART. We decided to take this amazing opportunity to invite contemporary artists involved with the Samurai project to explore the topic in this well-trafficked lobby.

The three artists selected were Andrew Hem, Mari Inukai, and Audrey Kawasaki.

Andrew Hem is a Los Angeles painter who is well-versed in large-scale murals on buildings. Originally a graffiti artist, Hem moved away from this towards street art, studying at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His final image of the Samurai figure is inspired by Raphael’s The Cowper Madonna, now on display in our galleries.

Mari Inukai is originally from Japan, and also now resides in Los Angeles. She studied at the California Institute of the Arts. She is known for her smaller scale paintings and strong use of figures in her work. Mari demonstrated her deep connection with her daughter by including her in armor on the right side of the mural.

Audrey Kawasaki is originally from Japan, studied art at Pratt in New York, and now resides in Los Angeles. Although she is traditionally known as a gallery artist who creates painstakingly detailed portrait illustrations, this was her first mural.









The most exciting part of this project took place during installation, when school groups, fans of the artists, staff, and general members of the public dropped in to watch the artists work. Going forward, we plan to make the Lancaster Lobby a more welcoming center for visitors that includes art at its core.

 The Samurai murals will stay on view until May 2016.

Learn more about Samurai!
See work-in-progress photos on Flickr

Press:
The mural to the story - Worcester Magazine
Majestic murals at Worcester Art Museum - Worcester Telegram & Gazette

- Katrina Stacy, Associate Curator of Education

Videos of WAM Lectures Available Online

The Worcester Art Museum's Master Series lectures, held on the Third Thursday of the month on select dates throughout the year, have been a joy to share with our public. These talks have highlighted objects on loan or within our permanent collection, giving insights into some of the most celebrated artists and works of art throughout history.

I am pleased to share with you the video of our February Master Series lecture, led by Linda Wolk-Simon. Her talk, entitled "God is In the Details: Backgrounds (and Foregrounds) in Raphael's Madonnas," sheds light on The Cowper Madonna, on loan to us from the National Gallery of Art through September. This event was filmed by our new partner, the WGBH Forum Network. Forum is a public media service of WGBH that collects thousands of video and audio lectures from the world's foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policymakers, and community leaders, and makes them available to the public for free. Our March and April lectures were also filmed for distribution by Forum, which is a thrilling new addition to our educational offerings, and of great benefit to our public. We will share these videos with you as soon as they are made public.

Learn more about The Cowper Madonna on WGBH Forum Network
Learn more about The Cowper Madonna on worcesterart.org

- Katrina Stacy, Associate Curator of Education

Recent Installation: Arrangement in Pink and Gray

Right: Arrangement in Pink and Gray (Afternoon Tea), 1894 Edmund Charles Tarbell (American, 1862–1938) Gift of Howard Freeman, in honor of Esther Freeman, 1995.73

The Museum recently installed an important painting by Edmund Charles Tarbell in its American decorative arts gallery. Arrangement in Pink and Gray (Afternoon Tea) was one of the artist’s most celebrated works, winning the Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design in 1894, and the Temple Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1895.

Arrangement in Pink and Gray illustrates Tarbell’s preference for a limited palette of soft, muted colors. He greatly admired the paintings of James McNeill Whistler, who often titled his works as though they were musical compositions—calling them arrangements, nocturnes, symphonies—to draw attention to their harmonies of color and tone. (His Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket, also in this gallery, is one such example.) Tarbell quite pointedly adopted these color concerns in his Arrangement in Pink and Gray, even borrowing Whistler’s titling strategy to highlight his aesthetic influence.

Browse the Worcester Art Museum collections online

- Elizabeth Athens, Assistant Curator of American Art