Seven Must-See Arts and Culture Events in Boston This Winter
Where to go and what to see for your winter design fix.
Life magazine cover image, November 23, 1936, taken by Margaret Bourke-White. / Photo courtesy of the Life Picture Collection and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
SoWa Winter Festival
Count on the annual SoWa Winter Festival to feature beautiful artwork, clothes, and jewelry from 100 of the region’s best makers. Kicking off at the SoWa Power Station, there’ll be plenty of food and drink on hand to help keep you satiated as you peruse the creative wares.
11/25–27, 11/30–12/4, 12/7–11, 530 Harrison Ave., Boston, 857-378-4449, sowaboston.com.
Life Magazine and the Power of Photography
This exhibition of Life magazine’s picture and paper archives at the MFA contains more than 180 objects, including vintage photographs, internal memos, and layout experiments. Visitors get a closer look into the creation and impact of Life’s images and how the magazine shaped narratives and conversations about war, race, technology, national identity, and more in the 20th-century U.S. The exhibit gives attention to Life’s women staff members and three immersive contemporary “moments” by artists today.
10/9–1/16, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston, 617-267-9300, mfa.org.
Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment
Harvard Art Museums’ Dare to Know invites visitors to embrace the Enlightenment era’s spirit of inquiry and see how the graphic arts inspired, shaped, and gave immediacy to new ideas during this time. In this exhibit, Harvard has brought together 150 prints, drawings, books, and other related collections from the U.S. and abroad to offer insight into the achievements and failures of this complicated era.
9/16–1/15, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge, 617-495-9400, harvardartmuseums.org.
Weekend Concert Series: Claremont Trio
Dating back to 1927, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Sunday-afternoon concert series is the longest-running music program in America. This winter, the Claremont Trio will perform an all-19th-century program that includes Johannes Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major and the works of two female composers, Emilie Mayer and Cécile Chaminade.
2/5, 25 Evans Way, Boston, 617-566-1401, gardnermuseum.org.
Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China
Featuring 130 photographs along with paintings, decorative arts, and prints from the Peabody Essex Museum’s collections, Power and Perspective provides an account of the exchanges between photographers, artists, patrons, and subjects in 19th-century China. The camera and photography’s development changed the way China engaged with the world and became a medium for social change, war, trade, and travel.
9/24–4/2, 161 Essex St., Salem, 978-745-9500, pem.org.
BU Invitation, Day One 2018, 90 x 60 inches, by Pelle Cass. / Photo courtesy of Pelle Cass and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
New Formations
This exhibit at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum explores kinship, alliance, and competition through art in the visual, physical form. Featuring human bodies in athletic performance and expressions of dance and procession, it shows how disparities across race, age, and gender affect our bodies’ movement through the world and captures the appeal of relating our bodies to sculptural form.
10/7–3/23, 51 Sandy Pond Rd., Lincoln, 781-259-3647, thetrustees.org.
Muchos Méxicos: Crossroads of the Americas Exhibition
Featuring Mexican objects, this bilingual exhibit explores Mexico’s history as a site of innovation, creativity, and cultural diversity. It focuses on Mexico as a multicultural and geographic crossroads and how the exchange of resources and ideas among Indigenous peoples forged a vibrant and respected nation.
12/16, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, 617-496-1027, peabody.harvard.edu.
