Every week, WGBH Arts Editor Jared Bowen sums up the exhibitions, theater, movies and music you should check out in and around Boston -- and what not to miss on your summer vacation.
WHISTLER’S MOTHER: GREY, BLACK AND WHITE, on view at the Clark Museum, in Williamstown, Mass., through Sept. 27
Synopsis: The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown is putting up a special visitor all summer long. She's an older woman sitting serenely, if not sternly, dressed in mourning clothes staring off into a room equally devoid of color. "Whistler’s Mother" is indeed prolific portrait painter James McNeill Whistler's mother, but it's less about who she is and much more about line and color. Landing the painting is a coup for the museum situated in the Berkshire Hills of Williamstown. It normally resides at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and rarely travels abroad. Here the Clark explores how the picture came to be.
NAUMKEAG, the gardens are open to the public in Stockbridge through Oct. 25
Synopsis: Built in the late 1800s, the Naumkeag estate in the Berkshires represents a masterpiece of Gilded Age architecture. New York attorney Joseph Hodges Choate and his family retreated there in the summertime. When, in 1926, Choate’s daughter, Mable, inherited Naumkeag, she teamed up with landscape designer Fletcher Steele to design over 30 years an elaborate network of gardens that were revolutionary for their time. And since 1958, it's been under the care of the Trustess of Reservations, which opened it up to the public. The Trustees has recently spent some $3 million to restore the gardens to their original grandeur.
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