arts

The deCordova Museum side entrance (image courtesy of the Trustees of Reservations)

The Trustees of Reservations announced in a statement that it will suspend indoor exhibitions at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum for two to three years beginning in mid-March. The sculpture park will remain open and no other facilities, programs, events, or operations at the deCordova will be affected.

The temporary indoor closure will allow The Trustees to upgrade the museum’s HVAC and climate control systems to ensure that the exhibition spaces meet museum industry’s stringent standards. During this time, curatorial and other Trustees staff will engage in focused and intensive planning for future exhibitions, programs, and educational offerings that explore the intersection of art, nature, and climate. They will also continue to bring new commissions, acquisitions, and exhibitions to the sculpture park.

The indoor exhibition program will be suspended on March 12 at the conclusion of its current exhibitions, New Formations, Downstream, and Carolina Caycedo: Apparitions/Apariciones.

The Trustees became custodians of deCordova after a 2019 integration. In 2022, they began a planning process for the renewal of deCordova’s accreditation and to assess and fund upgrades to the museum facilities. As the assessment and recommendations from that process were being finalized, concerns about the consistency of climate controls in the main building emerged, and The Trustees concluded that the temporary suspension of indoor exhibitions was warranted.

“While we will miss welcoming the public to indoor exhibitions during this time, the temporary suspension will allow us to fast-track important improvements and focus our creative energies on developing the exciting vision for art and nature that initially brought our two organizations together,” said Nicie Panetta, Trustees interim president and CEO.

“We have a hugely ambitious program for the sculpture park and for exhibitions across the state of Massachusetts. We believe doing this necessary work in the galleries will ensure our ability to deliver an exciting and comprehensive vision centered around artists engaging with the environment for generations to come,” said Jessica May, deCordova’s vice president for art and exhibitions and artistic director.

Art programming at deCordova will feature a more robust outdoor exhibition schedule, and the property will continue to host lectures, concerts, dining, summer camp, weddings and other event rentals, and other public and community engagement activities. The decision also will have no impact on the Lincoln Nursery School, which operates on deCordova grounds.

This spring and summer, the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard (also owned by the Trustees) opens two exhibitions with textile artist Rachel Hayes. The first, opening March 11, is called Transcending Space and showcases several large, color-block fabric hangings alongside a new body of work that combines dried flower bouquets with patches of vibrant fabric. A new outdoor commission, Rachel Hayes, The Edge of Becoming, opens June 21 and features bright colors that both relate to Shaker textiles found in the museum’s collection and evoke a sense of optimism sought by the site’s Transcendentalist founders.

Commuters approach “Speeding Green Line” at the new Medford/Tufts MBTA station.

By Maureen Belt

While thousands of commuters impatiently waited years for the MBTA to extend its Green Line to the Tufts campus in Medford, Lincoln resident Nancy Selvage was at home shaping the art to characterize the new station.

Her contribution to GLX (the MBTA’s Green Line Extension project) took more than seven years from the day she was granted the commission. It finally saw the light of day (actually predawn) at 4:40 a.m. on Dec. 12, 2022, when the Medford/Tufts station opened to large crowds and great fanfare including a ribbon cutting. In a later interview with the Lincoln Squirrel, she pulled up a Twitter post of then-Gov. Charlie Baker, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and other dignitaries flashing big smiles while cutting a ribbon at the inauguration. One of Selvage’s newly installed pieces, “Speeding Green Line,” was a prominent backdrop.

“I’m not a Twitter follower myself,” she remarked. “Someone forwarded this to me.”

“Speeding Green Line” and the station’s wayfinder signs — platform indicators that give commuters information — are now part of Selvage’s public art work portfolio, which includes an installation at the Google building lobby in Cambridge and at the Canyon Rim in Arizona, among others. Selvage incorporates location, environment, and usage into all of her work.

In an earlier plaza design that was later scrapped due to budget cuts, the purpose of the GLX art was to camouflage unsightly ductwork and to compensate for the lack of landscaping. The current purpose is to simulate the visual effect of trees speeding past a moving train.

Nancy Selvage at her desk.

“Speeding Green Line” consists of two 22-foot-long, 120-pound backlit glass panels placed over the Medford/Tufts entrance. Selvage made complex blueprints and engineered a design to ensure the finished art would hold up to New England weather and the expected hustle and bustle of a long-overdue light-rail station. Aesthetically, she meticulously designed it to reflect light and, though static, give the appearance of motion as one passes by.

“The piece is activated by the view of movement,” said Selvage. 

On the station platform, the artwork suggests a correspondence between commuters and honeybees in a sequence of four panels: setting forth (flying off), finding sustenance (foraging), returning to nourish a community (back home), and sharing news of the journey (waggle dance). The images were created digitally by collaging and warping photographic details of Selvage’s perforated metal sculptures.

She was unaware at the time that Tufts University was the first urban campus in Massachusetts to be certified in the Bee Campus USA program. Selvage is also a Tufts alumna — she holds an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University as well as a BA in art history from Wellesley College. Gardens maintained by the Tufts Pollinator Initiative at four sites on campus contain native plants to feed a diversity of pollinators, according to a December 2022 article about Selvage’s work in TuftsNow.

“It’s about coming and going and finding your way,” she said, comparing her images of bees on their journey of finding nectar to “commuters finding sweetness in the city.” (Click here to see detailed proof images.)

Selvage’s creativity is only one of the ingredients that are essential to her multilayered work. She also needs plenty of patience, trust in others, the ability to work within budget constraints and, in the case of public art, a tolerance for multiple bureaucratic meetings.

As with any major project, challenges cropped up. When sketching ideas for “Speeding Green Line,” she wanted natural shades of green. She toyed with iPhone photos of local summer foliage, but the images became blurred when enlarged using Photoshop. She then hired a photographer with a high-resolution digital camera, so images of individual pine needles and oak leaves remained vivid.

Once digitally expanded across 22 feet, she captured the green abstract lines she sought. Intentionally, she added a thin colorless vertical stripe every few inches, necessary to give the effect of motion. Selvage then delivered her files to a fabrication company with expertise in printing and a kiln to fuse her images onto hurricane-proof glass. Despite that precaution, installers broke one of the panels during the installation. It had to be refabricated and installed a few weeks after the opening.

Selvage’s honeybees hover about curved blossoms, also of her creation, on the 4-foot by 18-foot wayfinder signs. The blossoms, which look like calla lilies, are actually warped and altered photographs of a variety of Selvage’s metal sculptures.

The same photographer was hired to take high-resolution photos of the pieces. Selvage Photoshopped the images into cartoonish flowers. She made the bees from details of other 3-D pieces, then worked to proportion each bee to a flower. One oversized bee performs a waggle dance, a rhythmic, geometric succession of rapid movements performed to announce they’ve found the cache. 

“It took forever to do these bees,” Selvage said. “It just took forever.”

Once the honey bees were situated, the MBTA outsourced her work to a factory for printing the images on metal panels. Unhappy with the results, the agency shopped around for other niche companies. “The only thing I could say is that the yellows are too orange,” Selvage said. But the second time was the charm. 

After factoring in supplies, payments to vendors and other expenses, Selvage barely broke even on her predetermined design fee. But she isn’t in it for the money. Interactive art is a passion she turned into a lifelong career. Other public installations by Selvage in the Boston area include “Hydro” in Lowell and “Water Wall” in Trolley Square in Cambridge, and she’s excited about a project to sculpt an interactive gathering place for children in Virginia.

“I’m totally comfortable in three dimensions,” Selvage said. “There’s nothing better than a big empty space. On the other hand, there’s nothing worse than a blank canvas.” 

L-S alumni soccer game

The Lincoln-Sudbury alumni soccer game will be held on Saturday, Nov. 26 at noon. It’s a casual game for alumni from any era. RSVP on this Facebook page. Questions? Email Tim Mangini at tim_mangini@wgbh.org.

String and voice concert

“Celebrating Collaborations: Sings and Strings” with Music Street will take place on Saturday, Dec. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Bemis Hall. Music Street Artistic Director Diana Katzenberg Braun celebrates her work as a collaborative pianist in a concert with award-winning Boston musicians Li-Mei Liang (violin), Alan Toda-Ambaras (cello), Hannah Meloy (soprano), and David Mather (baritone). Sponsored by the Friends of the Lincoln Public Library.

Learn about the history of nutcrackers

“Nutcrackers: A Colorful History” will take place via Zoom on Thursday, Dec. 1 at 11 a.m. You may never have given those funny painted statues much thought, but the history of nutcrackers involves the development of tools from the Stone Age to the Industrial Age. Led by art historian Mary Woodward, who serves as a guide at several Historic New England properties. Register for the Zoom link here. This virtual event is hosted by the Tewksbury Public Library, in collaboration with several Massachusetts libraries. Sponsored by the Friends of the Lincoln Library.

Help families affected by abuse

Each year the Sudbury-Wayland-Lincoln Domestic Violence Roundtable sponsors a family for the holidays. Families in shelter for the holidays face a sad and difficult time as they are separated from family and friends and are hiding from their abusers. Sponsoring a family can be a wonderful way to help as a family or organization. Three local agencies offer services and programs for families affected by domestic violence. Holiday drives start early so agencies have time to process donations. In some cases, gift cards are being collected so families can shop and wrap their presents. For more information about how to help, please contact:

• REACH Beyond Domestic Violence — Maria Duffy, Assistant Director of Development, mduffy@reachma.org, 781-891-0724 ext.109, Deadline: November 29.
• The Second Step gift card drive — Michaela Estes, mestes@thesecondstep.org, 617-467-5334. Deadline: December 15.
• Voices Against Violence — Simone Williams, simonew@smoc.org, 508-820-0834. Deadline: December 15.

The Trustees of Reservations recently announced a new face and a promotion involving the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Tess Lukey, who will be based at the deCordova and the Fruitlands Museum, is The Trustees of Reservations’ first-ever Associate Curator of Native American Art, and Sarah Montross has been promoted from Senior Curator to Chief Curator, The Trustees.

Tess Lukey

Lukey, an Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal member and lifelong New Englander, will develop exhibitions and research initiatives related to The Trustees’ Indigenous art collections.

“We are entering a new period in the history of this organization with Tess’s arrival as Associate Curator of Native American Art. We are eager to learn from her, to work with her, and to support her as she develops new partnerships with Native artists and communities throughout North America,” said Jessica May, Managing Director of Art and Exhibitions and Artistic Director at deCordova. “The stories of community and connection that Tess is poised to tell are so important for our organization and our culture.”

“Whether it’s collecting new Native American artists or reinterpreting existing works, my goal is to help expand the narratives, examine stereotypes, and confront biases around Native American art,” she said. “This is a critical and unique inflection point for museums and I’m grateful organizations like The Trustees are hiring Native American staff members to more fully tell Indigenous stories.”

Lukey has worked for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, and the John Sommers Gallery in Albuquerque, N.M.  bachelor’s degree in ceramics and art history from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a master’s degree in Native American art history with a minor in museum studies from the University of New Mexico. In her spare time, she is a traditional potter and basket weaver practicing the techniques of her own Indigenous community. She currently lives in Sutton, Mass., the ancestral home of the Nipmuc Nation, with her partners and children.

Sarah Montross

Montross has successfully organized numerous exhibitions, publications, and outdoor commissions at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum over the past seven years. Notable exhibition projects include Jeffrey Gibson: INFINITE INDIGENOUS QUEER LOVE (2021); Visionary New England; and co-curating the New England Triennial (formerly Biennial) in 2016, 2018 and 2021. She has also activated deCordova’s outdoor sculpture program with loans and new commissions. She’s currently organizing an exhibition and outdoor commission with the artist Hugh Hayden that will open in April 2023.

As Chief Curator, Montross will continue to shape the exhibition and sculpture park program at deCordova while also broadening her oversight of and collaborations with the exhibitions team and guest curators for projects at Fruitlands and across the state.