New England Journal of Aesthetic Research news headlines

Local museums should “buy an atheism bus-ad from the British Humanist Association.” Historic public conceptual art at affordable prices.

Glass Art Society conference in Boston cancelled.

Chicago’s Field Museum to cut staff and research, then refocus mission as it struggles with a high debt load and the effects of the economic recession.

Boston group asks condo developer to incorporate a new arts and cultural center along with residences into his plans for a former Southie church.

Brandeis University renames residence hall for former president Jehuda Reinhard to honor his contributions to the school. “During his 17-year tenure, Reinharz, who announced his resignation in 2009 and left office at the end of 2010, led a campus-wide expansion that included 36 endowed faculty and staff positions, 29 new or renovated campus buildings, and 17 new research centers and institutes,” according to the student paper the Brandeis Hoot. He resigned amid international criticism for leading a plan to shutter the school’s renowed Rose Art Museum and sell off its collection.

“For the first time in recent memory, all Boston Public School students in Roslindale will have art classes this year.”

Correction of the week: From the New York Times: “An article on Oct. 13 about an exhibition at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University of works by Dor Guez, an artist from Jerusalem whose work is critical of Israel, included a number of errors and misquotations….” Not mentioned: The article’s description of Brandeis leaders’ 2009 threat to shut down the Rose was so confusing as to imply that the victims were the perpetrators.

Boston philanthropist Ruth Shapiro — a supporter of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Children’s Museum, Wellesley College and Brandeis University — died Oct 15.

Harvard researchers use interference effects—“such as those that cause oil pavements to reflect a rainbow of swirling colors”—to cause atomically thin metal films to shine different colors. “Just by changing the thickness of that film by about 15 atoms, you can change the color,” says Frederico Capasso of the results produced by his laboratory team. “It’s remarkable.”

Hunter O’Hanian, vice president of institutional advancement and executive director of the foundation for Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, has been named the first director of New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, billed the world’s first and only museum of LGBT art.

Boston’s public art is “boring, old and stodgy,” according to Boston Magazine. Their solution? Fewer bronzes. “A national, or, better yet, an international jury of art experts should bring together a wide range of artists to create contemporary pieces across the city.” And fund it via Kickstarter. Hmmm. Our proposal: Just put Caleb Neelon in charge.

Gretchen Dow Simpson’s paintings have been featured on the cover of The New Yorker 58 times. Now she’s painting a mural of the inside of a historic sawmill along Route 95 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where she resides, as part of the state’s “Gateway Beautification” program.

“Sneaker Museum” exhibit at Revere Hotel showcases Air Jordans since 1985 from the collection of Rick Kosow. Many were designed by Tinker Hatfield. Local hip-hop artist Nabo Rawk says, “Hatfield doesn’t always get the credit he deserves. He came up with so many exotic and futuristic details for basketball sneakers and running sneakers that people never saw before. I think he was the first person to really look at the job of being a shoe designer as an artist.”

Ringling Bros. elephants paint with children from the Jimmy Fund Clinic, their families, and students from Lesley University’s art therapy program at Boston’s Fenway Park: “Instead of brushes, the kids will use their hands and the elephants’ feet to create art work that will be donated to the Jimmy Fund Clinic.”

“Fifty years ago, Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino, a teacher and a scientist, conducted the first glass workshops at the Toledo Museum of Art, and the American Studio Glass Movement was born. Littleton and Labino created the first small-scale furnaces and equipment that took glass blowing and fabrication out of the factory and into the hands of artists. This made academic glass programs possible at colleges and art centers throughout the country, such as at the Rhode Island School of Design…”

Hannah Currier, the former New Hampshire first lady, left her home and $900,000 for the founding of Manchester’s Currier Museum of Art when she died in 1915.

“Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling could be forced to sell a blood-stained sock he wore to lead the team to its first World Series championship in 86 years, as well as other memorabilia, to help pay back millions of dollars in loans he guaranteed for his failed video game company.” This kinda makes us feel bad for the schmuck now.

Artist and Seal Harbor summer resident Leslie Fogg donates $10,000 to afterschool programs run by the Maine Sea Coast Mission. “Every two years, Ms. Fogg has a one-day show of her paintings on the lawn next to The Cottage shop on Main Street in Northeast Harbor,” the FenceViewer reports. “This is the third time that Ms. Fogg has given $10,000 from the show’s sales to the Mission.”

“He was a great artist, not just a machinist,” a colleague said of Bob Kingsland, a BU professor who spent decades building a steel sailboat. He died over the summer at age 65. “Machinists are not mechanics, they are really artists, they build beautiful things. And if you consider them as artists, Bob was one of the greatest.”

Street artist behind satirical “NYPD Drones: Protection when you least expect it” posters around New York is, supposedly, a 29-year-old art school grad from Maine. Police spokesman quips: It “appears to be NYPD critics subjecting us to a droll attack.” But the officers dusting for fingerprints don’t seem to find it that funny.

“This is our first piece. We’re speaking out against the two-party system. If you look at either individual, they are treating the economy in ways that are completely inappropriate,” says a member of the street art gang that calls itself Blank Administration, which plastered some two dozen buildings around Boston with posters criticizing Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. “We’re actually faced with two choices that are equally bad, the American public cannot win.”

“I honor the legacy and believe I have a responsibility to continue it, basing it always on our traditions and knowledge of literally thousands of years,” says Molly Neptune Parker of Princeton, Maine, who makes baskets in the traditional Passamaquoddy style. She was recently named a winner of a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship.

“Beautifully composed, sort of pitch-perfect, iconic. It was almost a bonus to know we were going to be part of the project,” Museum of Fine Arts curator Jen Mergel about how wonderful it was for the Guerrilla Girls to protest the lack of women in the museum’s collection.

The Civil War lives on: “Good luck with your next release ‘Sweet home Massachusetts,’” complains a fan in reaction to news that last living member of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd will abandon use of the Confederate flag at concerts because it is racially offensive.

“My motive was not to immediately make money, in fact it is going to take a long time until we break even, but it is something I wanted to do for the community,” said Piyush Patel of restoring historic Park Theater in Cranston, Rhode Island. “Hopefully the New England community will support this theater and I would like to make this theater the place for all the latest Indian events.”