From our review of RISD’s “2011 Faculty Biennial”:

The Rhode Island School of Design’s “2011 Faculty Biennial” at the RISD Museum features more than 200 teachers for a varied buffet ranging from tangled noodley junk sculpture to sleek architecture designs to loose abstract paintings.

A few years back, Philadelphia-based RISD printmaking teacher Daniel Heyman caught people’s attention with his series of portraits of former Abu Ghraib prisoners surrounded by writing describing their time in the notorious American jail in Iraq. Heyman’s drawing wasn’t impressive, but his transcribed accounts of how American captors harassed and humiliated the Iraqis were heartbreaking — and shaming.

Here Heyman dispenses with words, and lets his symbolic images carry the meaning in his large, ambitious etching and relief print, “The Blinded Photographer.”

Read the rest here.

The Rhode Island School of Design’s “2011 Faculty Biennial,” RISD Museum, 20 North Main St., Providence, Feb. 25 to March 20, 2011.

Pictured above: Regina Gregorio, “Woven Coat and Printed Body Suit For Gary Graham, Fall 2010 Collection.”

Brian Shure, Faculty, “Fifty-Fifth and Fifth,” ink on paper, 2010.

The Springfield Museums in Dr. Seuss’s hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts, celebrated the late author and illustrator’s birthday on March 5 with its “Dr. Seuss Takes the Cake” contest. (Seuss was born Theodor Seuss Geisel on March 2, 1904.) Cakes with L.O.V.E. of Chicopee’s entry (pictured above) was visitors’ pick for the best cake. Second place went to the Lincoln Culinary Institute in Suffield, Ct. Edible Memories of Granby, Mass., took third place. The other contest entrants were Auntie’s Custom Cakes of Springfield, Atkins Farm Country Market of Amherst, Carolyn’s Sweet Tooth of Granby, and Big Y World Class Markets in Ludlow.

From our review of “The Magical Realism of Louise E. Marianetti” at Bert Gallery in Providence:

The starched woman in Louise Marianetti’s 1942 painting (pictured above) holds a copy of the libretto to Verdi’s “Aida.” Her blonde ringlets are decorated with flowers, a pair of blue birds, and a veil. But what sticks with you how she stares with her eerie blue eyes.

“The Magical Realism of Louise E. Marianetti” at Bert Gallery resurrects the career of the artist who was born in Providence in 1916. She studied at RISD and the New York Art Students League, where she picked up the egg tempera technique of the early Renaissance. Marianetti returned to her family’s home in North Providence in the early 1940s and often wore a black beret.

Read the rest here.

“The Magical Realism of Louise E. Marianetti,” Bert Gallery, Providence, Jan. 12 to March 19, 2011.

Gallery 17 Peck in Providence says it will close for good on Sunday, March 20. “Lease is up, not renewing. Going to play softball with my daughter,” gallery owner Dan Kelley emails.

The gallery began at 17 Peck St. as a way to help promote the custom framing Kelley did at an art supplies and frame store that he bought in 2003. The art exhibits, which at first offered just his own paintings, eventually took over the store and expanded to include work by others, particularly contemporary Native American artists. He moved it to 303 Atwells Ave. in June 2008. Last August, the gallery featured ’60s psychedelic star Peter Max.

As part of The Boston Phoenix’s annual Best of Boston contest, the newspaper is inviting readers to vote for one of the six artworks listed below as the worst public art around Boston:

= Boston Irish Famine Memorial
= New England Holocaust Memorial
= Buster Simpson’s Granite Seats at Downtown Crossing
= Wall of Respect for Animals, McGrath Highway, Cambridge
= City Hall, Boston
= Wyland Whale Mural, off Route 93

Click on the “vote now” icon above to vote in this category. You can vote on the rest of the ballot here. Voting runs through March 17, 2011.

These six nominees come from the 47 artworks from across the region that New England Journal of Aesthetic Research readers nominated as potentially the worst public art in the region–plus our pick: Buster Simpson’s lousy granite seats at Boston’s Downtown Crossing T.

We’d asked for nominations last August. (The entire list is here.) The idea, as we wrote then, was to “select one work that is particularly lousy. And launch a campaign to have it removed.”

We regularly write for the Phoenix, but the Phoenix picked these nominees from our list mostly without our input—well, except for the Irish Famine Memorial, which we suggested the newspaper include because it received the most reader nominations.

Also, it looks like we’re most likely not going to pursue the removal of any of these works. Sorry, for getting your hopes up. We’ll explain more in an upcoming post.

Tuesday, March 15, 7 p.m.
Patrick Lichty, a Chicago-based tech and conceptual artist, writer, independent curator, animator for The Yes Men, and executive editor of Intelligent Agent magazine, speaks during the “Upgrade! Boston” series at MIT Media Lab (E14), 6th floor, room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, Massachusetts. If the door is locked, call 917-548-7780. Free.

Thursday, March 17, 5 to 9 p.m.
Gallery Night Providence offers free bus tours of 22 of Providence’s galleries, museums and historic sites. Tours start from Regency Plaza at One Regency Plaza.

Thursday, March 17, 6 p.m.
“Steam Screens & Under Aquarius,” a Talk by Artist Joan Brigham at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center’s Bartos Theatre (Wiesner Building E-15, lower level atrium, located downstairs from the galleries), 20 Ames St., Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bringham, a Research fellow from 1974 to 1999 at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, will discuss her collaborative relationship with Stan VanDerBeek. Free.

Thursday, March 17, 6:30 p.m.
Artists Karen Cappotto, Liz Carney and Megan Hinton along with curator Mike Wright discuss their exhibition “Beyond Surface” at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial St., Provincetown, Massachusetts. Free.

Friday, March 18, 6 p.m.
Krzysztof Wodiczko talks about his work at MassArt’s Tower Auditorium, 621 Huntington Ave., first floor, Boston. Free. Preregistration is required at http://www.dynamicmediainstitute.org/DMI_annual_lecture_2011.

Saturday, March 19, 3 to 6 p.m.
ArtsUnion hosts its second annual “Get Your Beard On: A Beard and Moustache Contest” at Precinct, 70 Union Square, Somerville, Massachusetts. Jimmy DelPonte will emcee; a panel of bearded judges will issue the verdict in 5 categories: natural full beard, free-style full beard, free-style moustache, free-style partial beard, (which includes goatees, sideburns and any other creative combination of the above), and for follicle challenged, best fake beard. Co-produced by Somerville Arts Council and Todd Easton. $5.

Sunday, March 20, 1 p.m.
St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Boston’s Southie neighborhood. Starts at West Broadway, ends at Dorchester Avenue.

Wednesday, March 23, 12:30 p.m.
Tony Johnson, director of multicultural affairs at Rhode Island School of Design as well as a visual and performing artist, and arts administrator, presents a talk “Express Yo’self: The Power, Problem, and Potential of the Arts” at Rhode Island College’s Alger Hall 110, 600 Mt. Pleasant Ave., Providence. Free.

Williams College graduates from 1961 have created a public art fund for the Williamstown, Massachusetts, school. The alums have pledged to raise $2.5 million to “encourage and support the ongoing acquisition of works of art to be displayed in indoor and outdoor public spaces on the Williams campus.” The school says the first artwork to be acquired for the school with help from the fund is “Double L Excentric Gyratory II” (pictured above), a 30-foot-tall kinetic sculpture made in 1981 by the American artist George Rickey (1907-2002). Plans call for the piece to be installed by June facing Main Street, between the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance and the Greylock residential halls.

Max Davidson, a member of the Williams Collegee class of 1961 and founder of the Maxwell Davidson Gallery in New York, which represents Rickey, says, “Rickey often said that emulating nature was not one of his artistic goals yet he referred to it as often as he eschewed it, and his outdoor sculptures blend seamlessly with their surroundings.”

The Henry Luce Foundation has given the Portland Museum of Art two grants totaling $285,000, the Maine museum reports. The Luce Foundation gave $200,000 to support the museum’s September 2012 exhibition and catalogue “Weatherbeaten: The Late Paintings of Winslow Homer,” curated by Chief Curator Thomas Denenberg and timed to celebrate the 2012 opening to the public of the Winslow Homer Studio in Prouts Neck, Maine, which the museum purchased from Homer’s heirs in 2006. The foundation also granted $85,000 to the museum support the chief curator’s position.

Brandeis University is planning to do what it calls “major renovations” to its Rose Art Museum over the summer in preparation for the celebration of the museum’s 50th anniversary next fall, the school has announced.

The project, as the school describes it, would primarily be an update of the original museum building, and would begin around of the end of this month. The main changes would be the removal of the reflecting pond on the museum’s lower level and removal of a wall and reception desk immediately inside the main door to allow more immediate views of art for viewers entering the building. (Details below.)

The Rose has been under a cloud since then Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz and other school leaders threatened to close the museum and sell off its collection because of the school’s financial problems in January 2009. After an international outcry, the school did not follow through with those plans, and the museum has remained open, though it has struggled to borrow art for new exhibitions as artists have been leery of being seen as supporting or ignoring the school’s threat to the Rose. A lawsuit brought by three Rose overseers–Jonathan Lee of Brookline, Meryl Rose of Swampscott and Lois Foster of Boston–to prevent the sale of Rose artworks continues in Suffolk Probate and Family Court in Boston, with the next hearing scheduled for April 26.

At a Brandeis forum on the arts last week, Brandeis President Frederick Lawrence, who took over for Reinharz in January 2011, said the Rose Art Museum is “an important asset to the school. … No art has been sold, and it’s certainly not my intention to do so,” according to a report in the Brandeis student newspaper The Brandeis Hoot. This is, of course, not a promise not to sell off art from the Rose collection, but it’s something. And the renovations could be seen as a concrete statement of a renewed commitment by Brandeis to the Rose. Time will tell.

The Waltham, Massachusetts, school says planned Rose Museum improvements include: “replacement of the front curtain wall with new, more energy-efficient glass, creation of a vestibule area to better maintain stable interior temperatures, relocation of the current reception desk and entryway wall so that, in [Brandeis Vice President for Planning and Institutional Research Dan] Feldman’s words, ‘when you walk in you will really see the museum open before you,’ installation of a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, removal of the shallow pond on the lower level of the building, new railing around the main staircase, installation of new ceilings, floors and LED lighting systems.” As of yesterday morning, Brandeis had not yet filed plans with the city of Waltham building department. The school says renovations are being funded by a donation from Sandra and Gerald S. Fineberg.

The Rose’s current exhibit “WaterWays” is scheduled to run through April 3. Brandeis says the exhibit “Regarding Painting,” which is scheduled to be on view through May 22 in the newer Lois Foster Wing, will remain open through mid-June and will be accessed through a temporary entrance.

President Barack Obama spoke at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts last night. “No photos of the President were allowed last night,” an MFA spokesperson tells us. “I can tell you that [MFA Director] Malcolm [Rogers] gave the President a little tour and showed him the dramatic painting of ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ by Thomas Sully.”

If you happen to have, say, taken a photo of Obama at the MFA yesterday, we’d love to post it. Please e-mail it to us here.

Maya Allison, curator at Brown University’s Bell Gallery since June 2010, is planning to leave the job May 31 in advance of moving to Abu Dhabi, where her husband Mark Swislocki, a specialist on the cultural history of China, has been hired to teach at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus. Bell Gallery Director Jo-Ann Conklin has begun advertising for a new curator.

Allison writes: “Later this year I will be relocating to Abu Dhabi, where the Emirate’s investment in art and culture — including a Guggenheim and a Louvre branch — promises exciting possibilities for me in a budding art community, and for my husband at NYU Abu Dhabi. This was not an easy decision, and I will always treasure my time here, at the RISD Museum, 5 Traverse Gallery, Pixilerations, and the Bell Gallery. I am working on two more shows at the Bell Gallery, and both will go up after my departure, so I will be back many times. I am profoundly grateful for all the kindness and generosity Providence has show me, especially its wonderful artists and my fellow curators. I am already thinking of how I can bring shows from Providence to Abu Dhabi one day — I invite everyone to stay in touch.”

Artist Jonathan Doyle charges that the state of New Hampshire violated his free speech rights when a park ranger stopped him from filming a Bigfoot video (an earlier video in the series is embedded above) at Mount Monadnock in 2009, according to a report by the Associated Press. Doyle, who grew up in Keene, New Hampshire, but now seems to be based in New York City, is suing the state with help from the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing that a requirement to get a permit to film in the park (which Doyle didn’t have) violates the First Amendment.

From our report on “Culture Stops”:

A Providence coalition of art organizations dubbed Culture Stops is calling for arts stoppages across the country on March 10 to model the potential effects of slashed government arts funding. Their slogan: “Witness a world devoid of creativity, imagination and thought.”

“The idea really came directly out of frustration about the [federal] budgets — the continuing resolution budget and the budget for 2012,” says Drake Patten of the Steel Yard in Providence. But the larger impetus “for this particular thing, at least for me as a cofounder, was thinking year in and year out we seem to be in this place where cultural funding is put on the block, or considered, or is there to be cut.”

Read the rest here.

Yesterday the “Culture Stops” gang announced the following actions planned for Providence for March 10: “During curtain calls at Trinity Rep, resident company members will discuss the impact of funding cuts. All nine branches of Providence Community Library will open late and the RISD Museum will close the Grand Gallery. AS220’s Criss Cross Orchestra plans to interrupt its set that night for eight minutes of silence. The Hive Archive begins its observations on Wednesday evening during a concert and will continue with a range of educational outreach activities during the day on March 10. Those who cannot fully cease their public service will interrupt their web presence, keep their agendas clear and use all forms of communication as an opportunity to educate the public about the role of creativity, imagination and thought in American life.

“Similar actions and stoppages are planned in other large cities across the US including New York and Chicago. Small towns are jumping on board too: the town of Hallowell, Maine has designed a widespread response to the day including a gallery closure and street actions.”

Pierre Menard Gallery announced today that it will close after its next exhibit, “One Of A Kind,” a show of artists’ books curated by Heide Hatry from March 8 to April 9, because the gallery says its lease for 10 Arrow St. in Cambridge has not been extended past April 15.

The gallery has been distinguished by its interest in both art and literature, and is perhaps most notable for exhibits of artists like Carolee Schneemann as well as Hatry’s intriguing and horrifying meat sculptures.

The gallery announced in a press release: “In 2004, Pierre Menard Gallery and its companion Lame Duck Books were founded by John W. Wronoski, a true believer in creating an environment where literature and art could happily co-exist. In an interview that he gave to the Harvard Crimson last October, when it came to light that the gallery and book store closings were a likely inevitability, Wronoski shared that he had no desire to resurrect his ‘two children’ in another location. But that could change, if the opportunity presents itself. His passion for showcasing interesting art may get the best of him. That being said, the gallery doors at 10 Arrow Street will close for good on April 15th.”