CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — On a rainy weekday afternoon, a tall, slender, dark-haired woman named Maria Schaedler-Luera waited in the lobby of Harvard’s Sackler Art Museum for four new students. They weren’t undergraduates, though. Schaedler-Luera works in the education department at the museum and uses art to teach English. Her work prepares immigrants to take the exam to become U.S. citizens.
 
When the adult students arrived, they introduced themselves. Wilman was from Honduras; Milagro, Marvin and Oscar from El Salvador. They all worked for Harvard University and were part of an education and training program there. They came to the museum to practice their English.
 
Schaedler-Luera has designed the session to align with her students' language lessons in the classroom. “Two of the things they’re working on right now are adjectives — identifying parts of speech — and they started working on past tense, so I will find ways to incorporate that,” she said.
 
More than a fun day at the museum

Her supervisor, Ray Williams, is the director of education at the Harvard Art Museums. He said that part of the citizenship exam is giving oral responses to questions in English.
 
“We knew that working on language skills was going to be important,” Williams said.
 
The Engaging New Americans project started as a pilot and grew with a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the hiring of Schaedler-Luera.
 
Williams said he was motivated to design the program because of “the ugly political rhetoric around immigration and how ungenerous it seems.” It made him think about “what an art museum might do to send an explicitly welcoming message to people who had chosen to relocate.”
 
Schaedler-Luera, a native of Brazil, said she understood what her students were going through.
 
“I’ve been here for almost eight years,” she said. “My first year here I also didn’t speak English very well… [and] I know we are not necessarily invited to participate in society or mainstream culture institutions.”
 
"Red" is an adjective

In the lobby of the Sackler, Schaedler-Luera strove to make her new student guests feel welcome. After introductions, she handed each of them a laminated, construction paper heart. She called it a “token” and brought the students into the modern contemporary art gallery on the first floor.
 
“I want you to look around and choose one work that is going to be your favorite, and once you choose your favorite work of art, you are going to place the paper heart on the floor in front of the art,” Schaedler-Luera instructed.
 
One by one, the students dropped the hearts on the floor signifying the artworks they liked the best, and then a discussion started. Schaedler-Luera asked Milagro to explain her choice.
 
Milagro had placed her heart in front of an abstract painting by the famous American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (see the painting). First in Spanish, and then in English, Milagro explained that she liked the colors red and pink, which fill the canvas. Responding, Schaedler-Luera made the point that colors are adjectives.
 
Enlightenment in language and experience

After all the students had had their turns, the group headed to the second floor of the art museum, where they stood in front of a large, light-gray sandstone statue of a seated Buddha (see the sculpture) from eighth-century China.  
 
It was time, Schaedler-Luera said, to tell a story. “Maybe you can use your paper to write down some verbs that you recognize as I tell you the story of Buddha’s birth,” she suggested. When she was done, the students read some of the past-tense verbs they heard and slowly repeated parts of the story, moving on to a long conversation about the meaning of the word “enlightenment.”
 
At the end of the class, Schaedler-Luera urged the students to come back again soon — a request that was met with vocal thanks. But the thank-you Schaedler-Luera has cherished the most came in an email from an English language instructor.
 
“She said, ‘It was so lovely to bring them somewhere new at Harvard where they don’t have to clean anything or wash any dishes and they were treated with such respect,’” said Schaedler-Luera.
 
Schaedler-Luera and her colleagues hope that the Engaging New Americans project will be a model for other art museums.

BOSTON — Who needs "Anonymous"? Boston arts institutions feature love, Shakespeare and Shakespearean love this weekend.
 
“Romeo and Juliet”
Boston Ballet
Runs through Nov. 13
 
A classically lush and epic production of Shakespeare’s tragic romance uses Prokofiev’s intense score to its fullest. John Cranko’s choreography brings the audience right into the tight-knit community of Verona. And dancer Misa Kuranaga, who alternates the role of Juliet with Erica Cornejo, comes into her own.
 
Aphrodite and the Gods of Love
Museum of Fine Arts
Runs through Feb. 20, 2012

Could this be the first time the classical goddess has been the subject of a museum exhibition? That’s what the MFA says. Its collection of often saucy vessels, coins, mirrors and more plunge you into Aphrodite’s seductive, life-giving world. Several items rarely shown outside Italy indicate the progress the MFA has made mending bridges with the keepers of Italian antiquities.
 
Greek poets thought this goddess was created even before Zeus, curator Christine Kondoleon said. “She’s primal. And she’s of course generative. She creates procreation, she creates fertility. When she first steps on land, she steps on the island of Cypress, near Papos, grass grows between her toes."
 
“Macbeth”
Boston Lyric Opera
Runs through Sunday, Nov. 13
 
Boston Lyric Opera starts its season with a production of the Verdi opera that eschews traditional Elizabethan dress for a plunge into the psychological journey of the Scottish protagonist, using a dark set with bodies hanging from the ceiling to show a world and mind that are quickly falling apart.
 
On “Greater Boston,” director David Schweizer said, “To me there almost is no literal way to interpret a nightmare, a dream gone awry like 'Macbeth.' I think it exists in a dreamlike reality. So what you need to find is a stage world that has its own credibility as a container for these dreams, these obsessive behaviors.”

BOSTON — It was 75 years ago this month that the Boston Museum of Modern Art opened in Boston. It billed itself as the "renegade offspring" of the Museum Of Modern Art. You know it better today as the Institute of Contemporary Art, or the ICA. I spent some time there last week looking at its history and its brand new show, Dance/Draw.

Advancing The Avant-Garde

"It was an important place on the art scene because of the whole idea of contemporary art and really showing the work that was coming out of Europe where the avant-garde was so alive," said Jill Medvedow, Director at the ICA.

The museum opened with a splash, presenting the first Boston area survey of Paul Gauguin. It lured Salvador Dali to its first gala. From there the museum just plowed forward, showing art emerging near and far. Swiss architect and designer Le Corbusier presented his first US show here in 1948.

"One of the things I love in looking at the ICA's history, and the word that keeps coming up for me is rupture; of trying to see what existed in the past and making a break with that in favor of a bold statement that's always facing forward," Medvedow said.

Like in 1966 when a forward-thinking ICA recognized the significance of Andy Warhol and was the first museum to show his films.

Casting The Net Wider

"Sometimes the most important contemporary art might not be seen in a gallery. Might be seen outside of a museum's walls, or in a theater, so we brought the Ballet Russes when we did our Picasso Matisse exhibition. When we showed Andy Warhol so early in Warhol's career, we brought iconic performances by the Velvet Underground," Medvedow said.

Just as it has brought the work of choreographer Trisha Brown for its newest show, "Dance/Draw."

In a regular series of performances on Thursdays and weekends, dancers perform "Floor of the Forest" within the exhibition.

Helen Molesworth, chief curator at the ICA described it this way.

"It speaks to the kind of blurring of boundaries between different disciplines. So on the one hand it's a sculpture; it's constructed out of steel pipe and there's a very heavy steel pipe webbing, woven into that webbing is pieces of clothing. And then what happens is the two dancers mount this apparatus and they wind and weave their way through the clothing. They both look like they're at the floor of the forest, they look like monkeys or lemurs but they also have this dolphin quality of breaking the water and then going back under," Molesworth said.

In the very smart, very engaging "Dance/Draw," ICA Chief Curator Helen Molesworth explores the literal line in art — whether it's in dance, sculpture or drawing.

'A Lodestar For Artistic Expression'

"Language remains fundamental to human communication and I think line remains fundamental to human visual communication. We can't escape it. The line remains whether it's the line of the body in dance or the kinds of lines that drawing give us. It's just a lodestar for artistic expression," Molesworth said.

"Dance/Draw" investigates drawing dating back to the 1960s, a time when Molesworth says art and dance broke away from tradition. The first gallery shows drawings made by batting heavily mascaraed eyelashes, by bouncing basketballs and by swirling hair. It's artists using the body, not just the hand.

"They started to democratize the art process. They wanted to make art with things that everybody had around the house with gestures that anyone could do," Molesworth explained. "Because they didn't want art to be only in the province of the wealthy or the highly trained, it was part of a massive cultural revolution that happened in the 60s and 70s."

Could Your Kid Really Do That?

But it begs the age-old question, could I bounce a basketball and get these results?

"What I always say to people is yes, your kid could do that. But after they started, could they finish? Would they have stuck with it? Would they have the endurance? The patience? And if they had gotten to the end and realized it didn't look quite right, would they have thrown it away and started again? That's really where the art part of it comes in," said Molesworth.

And out. The show also follows the line as it moves off the canvas.

"String and wire are a 3-dimensional line. So instead of looking at those objects as sculpture I started looking at them as drawings. And actually seeing the line having literally moved off the page and into space," Molesworth said.

And forward. Which has been the ICA's charge for 75 years — it will follow the line wherever it reinvents art.

PEABODY, Mass. — On view at the Peabody Essex Museum right now are scenes from an affair both torrid and tempestuous. When artist Man Ray met model Lee Miller, they fell madly in love and produced some of the twentieth century's most celebrated works.

Lee Miller was a 1920s supermodel when she met Man Ray.

"She appeared on the cover of Vogue, she became Edward Steichen's favorite model. And then a curious thing happened. Her image was licensed to the Kotex company for feminine hygiene products. And as a result, all of her modeling work dried up and she had to find other things to do," said Phillip Prodger, curator at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Man Ray was a surrealist artist — a legend already in the making and 17 years her senior. Looking to be an artist in her own right, Miller tracked Man Ray down in Paris — finding him at a bar near his studio.

Prodger describes the moment Man Ray and Miller met. "Man Ray says there are two problems. 'The first problem is I don't take assistants. And the second problem is I'm going on vacation and I won't be back for two weeks.' She says, 'I'm going with you.'"

And she did. It was 1929 and as documented in "Man Ray | Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism" now on view at the Peabody Essex Museum, the two spent the next three years together. She was his apprentice then a peer and always his lover. They pushed each other personally and professionally, establishing singular styles.

"Man Ray was primarily interested in photographing in the studio and he was a very theatrical artist in a way," Prodger said. "He liked to set things up... you see Man Ray making surrealist compositions in the studio, you see Lee Miller going out on the street and photographing things that she sees. And in fact she was one of the first photographers to do that."

In this exhibit, you will find their disparate take on nudes as well. He finds a softness and rapture in her.

Prodger described Man Ray's rendering of Miller: "It's very warm, very inviting, she looks sensual, beautiful and erotic."

Prodger said that Miller found nothing erotic in herself. "She looks strong, you can see muscle definition, her back is held upright, she really looks like a feminist hero."

Aside from perspective, their personalities collided too. Theirs was an aggressive relationship fraught with jealousy and conflict. Like the time Miller fished one of Ray's photographs out of the trash and claimed it as her own. Man Ray exploded.

"He took that photograph that she had printed which showed her neck, took a razor blade and sliced the photograph across the neck and then took scarlet paint and painted where the so-called wound would be in that photograph and it was dripping down as if he had slit her throat," Prodger said.

Among the most famous of Man Ray's manifestations of rage — his metronome.

"He attached her eye to the pendulum of a metronome and gave instructions that it should be set in motion going back and forth, back and forth, until the viewer couldn't stand it any more and then smashed with a hammer," Prodger said.

And when she left him, Man Ray got over her in part by creating his painting of levitating lips. They are Miller's and he tended to it every day for two years. Lovers for just a spell, Man Ray and Lee Miller remained intertwined for their lifetimes. Their work though, evokes for eternity.

"Man Ray | Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism" is at the PEM through December 4, 2011

BOSTON — "Degas and the Nude" at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) brings together 145 works by Edgar Degas — a staggering collection of pieces that generally never travel. And remarkably, Degas and the Nude is a genre largely unexplored until now. "While not his most famous subject, it's not ballet dancers after all, it lasts with him from start to the end," said George Shackelford, Chair of the Art of Europe at the MFA.

Detail of "After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Neck" by Edgar Degas,1895-98. On exhibit at the MFA courtesy of Paris, Musée d'Orsay, bequest of comte Isaac de Camondo, 1911. © Photo Musée d'Orsay

The show follows 50 years of Degas nudes beginning in the painter's 20s, when his work is far from being immediately recognizable. An historical painter is what Degas thought he'd be and his skill was immediately apparent said Shackelford. "He is one of the greatest draftsmen of all time. You will see that his ability to capture line is really the moral center of his art. It's the thing he keeps coming back to; that sense of the contour and the way it defines musculature of the body, the movement of the body, pose, gesture."

Within 20 years, Degas had evolved and by the 1880s was depicting female nudes with realism. They were real, unromanticized women doing real things, like their toilette.

"It's almost a completely new modern, Degas-like way of depicting the human figure," Shackelford said. But it was not without its detractors. "Many critics found them a little bit off-putting," Shackelford explained. "They found the women to be dumpy or lumpy or angular, it was either they were too skinny or too fat. But there was a great group of people who thought they were absolutely exceptional."

Before the impressionist nudes of the 1880s though, Degas spent a number of years depicting prostitutes in high-class Parisian brothels. These often-graphic works never went public in Degas' day. "They're not prurient. They're very witty and they're often satirical, but not hateful either," Shackelford said.

As the exhibition illustrates, Degas' depiction of the nude only evolved and strengthened over the course of his career, especially when considered alongside his more well-known works: dancers. "He's drawing some of the dancers in the nude before he puts tutus on them," Shackelford said. "He's sculpting nude dancers, he's in fact turning more and more in this period to sculpture."

But Degas never turned away from nudes, as evidenced in the show's last gallery where in his late 60s and nearing the end of his career, Degas is mindful of his legacy. "He is creating a new, very bold language of painting for himself … intensified color, very, very bold lines and really an energy that seems to be boundless at a time that you think he might be slowing down." Shackelford said.

"Degas and the Nude" is on display at the MFA through February 5, 2012.

BOSTON — It's a nationwide first: The MFA now has a permanent gallery dedicated to jewelry.

Its opening show, “Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern,” shimmers, captivates and even perplexes. It shows the highlights of the MFA’s extensive collection, says Pamela Parmal, the museum’s Textile and Fashion Arts Department head, who spoke on behalf of the exhibition's curator, Yvonne J. Markowitz.

“There are approximately 11,000 pieces of jewelry in the collection which ranges from ancient Egypt to the present—about 6,000 years of jewelry history from across the globe,” Parmal said.

Although visitors may be enchanted by the beautiful Egyptian pieces on display, most probably won’t believe it has magical powers -- although the pieces' original owners did.
 
“People would wear it to protect themselves from evil,” Parmal explained. “Or they felt the jewelry had the power to increase fertility, or provide them with a long life.”
 
A long marriage is surely what gun magnate Samuel Colt anticipated when he gave his new bride an 1856 Tiffany necklace-and-earrings suite estimated at 60 carats.

Shopaholic Mary Todd Lincoln treated herself to a diamond brooch and matching earrings from a Washington jewelry emporium during a $3,200 spending spree (That's about the equivalent of $76,700 today).

But that piece wasn’t nearly as expensive as the platinum, diamond and emerald brooch purchased by heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in the 1920s.

The Marjorie Merriweather Post brooch. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reproduced with permission. (Copyright Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)

“It includes a very large carved emerald that was carved in the seventh century in India,” Parmal explains. “Surrounded by diamonds and more emeralds, it was one of her favorite stones.”
 
There’s much more to this collection than carats. Also on display are the costume-jewelry cuffs that inspired Coco Chanel, a charming Faberge bulldog with ruby eyes and a diamond-studded buckle, and perhaps most disturbing, real hummingbird heads turned into earrings.

Considerable attention is also paid to the Arts and Crafts movement advanced by a group of studio artists in the early 1900s.
 
“They didn’t value the diamonds and the rubies and the emeralds that we still value today,” Parmal said.  “They looked at other less expensive semi-precious stones and used wonderful technique to incorporate those into their jewels.”
 
From wooden Egyptian pieces to natural design to Mary Todd Lincoln’s extravagance, the MFA showcases a wide range of jewelry in their new gallery space.
 
The MFA’s “Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern” is on display through November 25, 2012.

Dale Chihuly's Lime Green Icicle Tower in the MFA's Shapiro Courtyard. (snlsn/Flickr)

The artist’s whimsical glass sculptures have pulled in a record-setting number of viewers, making the exhibition the fifth-most-viewed show in the museum's history. Now, the MFA hopes to capitalize on that interest by soliciting  donations via text message, collection box and online to help it acquire the 42-foot tall Lime Green Icicle Sculpture that currently towers in the Shapiro Courtyard, just outside the new Art of the Americas wing.

Kim French, the deputy director of communications for the MFA, said museum officials were struck both by the overwhelming interest in the show and by how many viewers used their camera phones to photograph and share the exhibition — and that green sculpture in particular — adding an interactive layer to the show. "I think that really connects people with the art and makes them feel a part of it," French said.

So it seemed appropriate for the MFA to utilize mobile giving, which allows a user to send a text message to a certain number and make a donation through their cell phone bill, for the very first time.

"Not only was that a great item for us to add to the collection, but what a wonderful way for us to ask for the donations through the mobile giving since so many people are using their phones to take pictures in front of the piece," French said.

By Tuesday, the museum had already received about 100 text messages, and collection boxes were filling up.

Aimee Van Zile said via Twitter that she donated Wednesday.

Another Twitter user, @Pinnochia, tweeted about wanting to donate using the hashtag #keepchihuly, but was initially nervous about the idea of donating online.

The MFA first sought public donations for an acquisition in the late 1940s, to acquire Paul Revere's Sons of Liberty Bowl. It went to the public again in 1979 for help purchasing Gilbert Stuart's portraits of George and Martha Washington. Both of those pieces are on display in the new Art of the Americas wing.

French says a major donor will match any public contributions. It hopes to raise the full amount for the sculpture — "in the low seven figures," says French — by the end of the year. ]]> Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:39 PM +0000 http://www.wgbh.org//articles/Chelsea-Art-Walk-Celebrates-A-Rebounding-City-3289 http://www.wgbh.org//articles/Chelsea-Art-Walk-Celebrates-A-Rebounding-City-3289 June 10, 2011



CHELSEA, Mass. — The city of Chelsea has seen tough times in recent years, including fires, bankruptcy and receivership.

But now, the city is rebounding. To celebrate, artists and citizens are coming together this Saturday and Sunday for the Chelsea art walk.

Earlier week, one of the event's founders, John Kennard, and Chelsea city Treasurer Bob Boulrice took WGBH's Bob Seay on a preview tour of the walk.

Click the player above to hear the story.

Vote for your favorite Short Waves Video thru May 22. 

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, WGBH in collaboration with the Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF) held an Open Call for short videos through the WGBH Lab.
 
Asian Pacific Americans have long been making waves in all aspects of American life, but their stories have often been lost in general U.S. discourse. “Short Waves: Stories Shaping Our Community,” hopes to bring light to these stories through locally made, short films about the Asian American experience and community.

The top four submissions can be viewed below, and were selected by a distinguished panel of judges:

• Tak Toyoshima, Creator/Secret Asian Man, Creative Director/Weekly Dig
• Donald Young, Director of Programs, Center for Asian American Media
• Judith Vecchione, Executive Producer, WGBH 

Please help determine the finalist and vote for your favorite.

The finalist will have the honor of automatic acceptance in the 2011 Boston Asian American Film Festival this November and possible broadcast on WGBH WORLD.

Watch The Short Films

Wear I Fit by Pratna Kem

N as in Name: Danh Nguyen by Pimthida Tiemchaiyapum

Depression, Suicide (Asian American Media Literacy Digital Story) by Frances Kai Ying Chow

Ballroom by Jennifer Carpenter

Vote On Your Favorite

Please help determine the finalist and vote for your favorite film. 

The finalist will have the honor of automatic acceptance in the 2011 Boston Asian American Film Festival this November and possible broadcast on WGBH WORLD.

The finalist will be announced on May 25^th at a public screening of all the Short Wave submissions at the Josiah Quincy School in Chinatown from 6:30-8pm. Filmmakers will be present for a brief Q&A session following. 

To RSVP for the May 25th event or for more information on BAAFF visit: baaff.org.

May 2, 2011

BOSTON -- When I was little, my mother would say that "A is for apple, B is for bear." Artist Edward Gorey, apparently, taught the alphabet somewhat differently.

B is for Basil assaulted by bears. © 2011 The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust

His 1963 book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies: Or, After the Outing, explains that "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears." At my house, by contrast, the bears leaned more towards Teddy than grizzly.

But Gorey's lovely, dark drawings -- carefully inked with his signature fine lines -- motor right through the alphabet, heaping calamities on one unfortunate child after the other: "U is for Una who slipped down a drain. V is for Victor squashed under a train."

Gashlycrumb is one of more than 180 original Gorey drawings on display at the Athenaeum, in a show organized by the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA and already presented there, in San Antonio, and Orlando.

Gorey’s works are an alternate universe, but one definitely at home in the exhibit hall: massive columns and purple walls form a backdrop for the delicate drawings, with their drolly sinister content: animals who show up for dinner parties, men wearing bowlers and long Victorian skirts, and titles like The Fatal Lozenge andThe Blue Aspic.

What the viewer learns is that Gorey’s vision -- familiar to many from his designs for the WGBH series Masterpiece Mystery!-- was long in the making. After an auspicious start as a child artist and a stint in the military, Gorey arrived at Harvard and began tucking his letters home to his mother in Chicago into intricately-painted envelopes. Beautiful, but also macabre: one features a man about to be strangled.

Staring out from their display cases in the Athenaeum, these rare Harvard envelopes -- like so much in Gorey's 100 books, stage designs, and illustrations--immerses brilliance in darkness.

"Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey," Through June 4, 2011, Boston Athenaeum, 10-1/2 Beacon Street, Boston, MA. Admission $5. Click here for more information.

BOSTON — A public elementary school is Dorchester is getting international attention this week. Policy makers and educators from 17 countries are coming to Boston as part of a conference focused on using the arts to improve the education of students with disabilities. 
 
As part of the event, the conference is highlighting the work of the William Henderson Inclusion Elementary School for its pioneering work incorporating the arts into its classrooms. 

A classroom at the Henderson School, a full-inclusion Dorchester elementary school that emphasizes the arts as a learning tool. (WGBH)

Tim Archibald is a professional musician, but he looks more like a gym teacher in his warm up pants. And he seems poised to jump into action at any moment.

In his office, which doubles as a supply closet for student drama productions, he seems pretty confident about today’s big project for the second graders, Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony arranged for xylophones.

“Last week we did Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, today we’re really upping it and we’re moving to Beethoven’s 9^th,” Archibald said. “The idea of being able to move from a traditional simple lullaby to something you might learn in Symphony Hall is ah… we’ll see how we do, right?”
 
In class, a couple dozen students are eager to work on the piece. In one corner, a student drops his head onto the desk. A teacher’s aid works to get him on task. The aid himself has cystic fibrosis -- as well as perfect pitch.
 
Overall, about one third have special needs ranging from severe disabilities to minor learning impairments, but in some cases, it’s hard to tell which ones.
 
“Often times people from the outside come in and they say which are the students with the disabilities because they’re all learning together in the same classroom, that’s the whole idea,” Archibald said.
 
“In our world, people have all sorts of different success rates at being able to do different tasks and being able to learn different things. I think the Henderson Inclusion School kind of reflects the way of the world.”
 
Before approaching the xylophones, the students worked on keyboards with technology that allows each to work at their own pace. A second-grader demonstrates how the keyboard calls out numbers to get her back on track if she misses a note. The correct keys light up as she plays.  
 
Archibald says the keyboard can provide as much or as little support as you need. This, he says, is the essence of how teachers at the Henderson design all of their curriculum. And it’s how students at different levels with different learning styles are able to learn in a classroom together. It’s a method called Universal Design for Learning.

Students at the Henderson school play outside during their recess period. (WGBH)

“This type of universal design, here it is in an electronic instrument, but it can be built into the thought process of how you develop curriculum for students to learn,” Archibald explained.
 
William Henderson was the first principal at the school, and the man for whom the school is named. He himself is blind, and says working with disabled students requires creativity.
 
“When you have kids who do not read regular print, whether it be because of blindness, learning disabilities, or cognitive delays, or because they have difficulty holding a book because of physical disabilities, you find other ways of accessing information.” 
 
The school was originally founded 22 years ago in partnership with VSA Massachusetts, a state chapter of a national organization on arts and disability. Henderson says the artists hired and trained by VSA have been helping the school find new approaches to learning.
 
“We found that the arts engage children, it embellished the curriculum, brought life to social studies. So that children talking about the Boston Tea Party, in addition to writing and reading about it, they’re doing role plays, they’re making murals, they’re doing poetry,” Henderson said.
 
Henderson said that makes the learning experience richer. “It’s something that the children remember a lot more, and both teaching and learning are more fun and a lot more meaningful.”
 
As it turns out, Henderson says, this approach to learning benefits all students, not just those with special needs. In the school auditorium, visual artist Mary Dechico is working on a backdrop for the school production of “Singing in the Rain.” She’s a parent with two students at the Henderson school.  
 
“I’m going to cry the day my older son leaves here. He loves it. He’s usually above the curve in his learning, but he just adores this place,” Dechico said. “He loves all the different kids, he’s grown up with these children, in the same classroom, doing the same things. It’s part of life, I feel likes it’s just so nice to see him approach the world that way.”

Students are seen in movement class. (WGBH)

Back in music class, the students are making progress on Beethoven’s 9^th.  Within a half hour, they’ve learned to play the first two lines as a group.  Eight-year-old Grace Kiwaunaka says she takes piano lessons at home so it’s easy for her, but she thinks the class is doing a fine job.
 
“Everyone does it really well, and everyone has a different way of doing it, but they all do it really well even though it’s different,” Kiwaunaka said.

“In the natural order of things we’d be seeing them collapsed in an abject pile on the ground, surrounded by rubble, awaiting the final chapter of their fate: dust, decay, dissolution.

But Parker proposes a different fate. From chaos, she creates order. From collapse, she creates effortless ascension. And from confusion (who did it, and how?), she creates transparency (I did it, and you can easily see how).”

Smee told WGBH’s Emily Rooney that he’s proud and grateful to be part of the Globe’s tradition of award-winning criticism – his college Martin Feeney won a Pulitzer for criticism three years ago, and Gail Caldwell picked up the ward for her literary criticism in 2001.

“I feel really lucky to work under Marty, he’s a great editor, a great leader,” Smee said of Martin Baron, the Globe’s editor.
 
Despite the high achievement the Pulitzer recognizes, Smee says he doesn’t consider it time to move outside of the Globe.
 
“I want to stay at the Globe, I really do. We moved here just three years ago,” Smee said of he and his wife, who lived in London together for four years before moving to Boston. “It was an enormous upheaval for us, we’re certainly not in a hurry to make another move.”
 
And he wants to stick with arts criticism, although he joked that his writing might – just might – fit in in what he calls the “Sport” section.
 
“Arts writers often get criticized for getting away with sort of purple prose, and so on, but I think it’s very much there in sport too. It’s not really purple prose, it’s great, engaging, wonderful prose,” Smee said.
 
You can read his full collection of nominated work here.

STOUGHTON — In a world of bigger-is-better, super-sized meals and McMansions, Derek Diedricksen is downsizing – a lot.
 
He calls himself a bizarre-chitect — so, not quite a fully-fledged architect — but Diedricksen is a master of cobbling together bizarrely-shaped, teeny-tiny houses that make downtown bathrooms look roomy.

One of Diedrikson's tiny homes sits in his backyard in Stoughton.

“This one’s only about 2.5 feet wide by 7 feet long,” he says, pointing at one of his first cabins, which he calls the “hick-shaw.”
 
“It’s a rickshaw for hicks,” he laughs.
 
2.5 ft. by 7 ft.? That’s about the size of a chaise lounge, which coincidentally, is exactly what the rickshaw is built on, making it easy to cart around single-handedly. At about 24 square ft., the gypsy-junker is a bit bigger, boasting a bunk bed and heater that runs on vegetable oil.
 
“This one more so than any of the other ones was an experiment where it’s made almost entirely from recycled or thrown away materials, expect for the roof,” Diedricksen said. “There’s a lot of storm windows, some incorporated wine bottles I cut with a tile saw, again free cedar wood.”
 
In fact, all of Diedrickson’s pint-sized house are made almost entirely from scavenged materials. Over the years, he’s amassed quite a quirky collection of curbside treasures.
 
“I’m always looking for the weirdest things I can to make into cabin window,” Diedricksen said, wading through piles of curbside pick-me-ups, like the front see-through door of a toaster. “Here’s part of an old toaster and I’ll use that. This is part of an old water cooler that I rigged into a solar shower.”
 
Nothing goes unused. Not even his old washing machine.
 
“People always get a kick out of this — this is the old side of my washing machine. I didn’t want to throw away the medal siding, so I made it into a little outdoor table, guarded by some weird garden snake,” Diedricksen chuckles, tossing a faded rubber snake over his shoulder.

Another Derek Diedricksen tiny house.

The washing machine loader will get used too. He says he’s going to make it into a Nemo-style submarine window.
 
Diedricksen’s obsession with micro-architecture started young. When he was 11, he got a Nintendo, but his parents didn’t want it monopolizing the family’s one television. So he says he found a loophole.
 
“My brother and I decided, you know what, we’re building our own place in the backyard. It had insulation, it had heating, it had power, it had a platform bunk bed, hammocks, a little black and white TV we got at a tag sale. So we’d just sit there all day playing Nintendo.”
 
Twenty years later, his own backyard houses three micro-houses. There’s an even smaller, kid-sized fort in the front of the house. And while the cabins do have a homey feel, Diedricksen lives in a real house. He says he uses the cabins more as escape pods. 
 
“They’re micro-shelters for vacation or weekend use. If you don’t want to work in your drab little office room at home, if you work from home on a laptop and are looking for a change of scenery – they’re just great get away spots.
 
And at around $200 a pop, it gives a whole new meaning to “second home.”
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