Nepal, Nevada, Brazil, Venice, Africa, and suburban America are some of the destinations dreamt of by the nine up-and-coming artists awarded Travel Grants under the 2002 Traveling Scholarship Program of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the variety of locations for which they have packed their bags reflects the diversity seen in their artwork. The exhibition " Traveling Scholars 2002, " opening at the Museum of Fine Arts on February 16, will show what this talented group has to offer, including Todd J. Elliott’s landscapes inspired by images derived from transportation and race-car graphics, Terence Hammonds’s sociopolitical examination of hip-hop culture, and Julio César Román’s scrutiny of the structure and strictures of society in terms of masculinity and sexuality.
What is this Traveling Scholarship Program? Well, it originated in the late-19th century as an opportunity for genteel artists-in-training to visit the centers of Europe to study with other artists and examine the art of yesteryear. Now, it awards close to $80,000 annually to Museum School alumni and students in its Fifth-Year Program (a one-year independent study offered upon completion of the Museum School Diploma program), who use it to wander the globe or their own back yards in the name of art. The recipients also get to debut their work at the MFA, which means that Boston audiences have a chance to see it before the rest of the world.
The selection process is simple but grueling: every year, two separate juries spend hours looking at slides submitted by more than 200 qualified applicants, all of whom also submit a statement about where they would go, and why, if they were to be selected. (I should know; I was on one of the juries for the 2002 awards — it leaves you bleary-eyed!) Almost all the exhibiting artists in " Traveling Scholars 2002 " are scheduled to be at the MFA during the run of the show to talk about their work — do drop by and ask them about their travel plans.
ARTIST BEAUFORD DELANEY, subject of the exhibition " Beauford Delaney: the Color Yellow, " opening at Harvard’s chic Sert Gallery on February 15, had his peripatetic side as well. One of the few African-American painters associated with Abstract Expressionism, Delaney was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1901, and began his formal art training in Boston in 1924 before moving to Depression-era New York City in 1929. This exhibition includes jazzy portraits and cityscapes Delaney painted in New York’s bohemian Greenwich Village in the 1940s and ’50s, and accomplished abstractions and portraits he painted in Paris, where he lived from 1953 until his death in 1979.
In post-WWII Paris, Delaney inhabited a lively world of expatriates that included his close friend James Baldwin. Delaney’s remarkable 1965 portrait of Baldwin, as well as paintings of Marian Anderson and Ella Fitzgerald, can be seen in this exhibition. His own life was shadowed by bouts of alcoholism and emotional struggle. As Baldwin put it, " [Delaney] has been menaced more than any other man I know by his social circumstances and also by all the emotional and psychological stratagems he has been forced to use to survive; and, more than any other man I know, he has transcended both the inner and the outer darkness. " " The Color Yellow " promises to shed a bright light on this complex artist.
" Traveling Scholars 2002 " is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue, from February 16 to April 6, with gallery talks by Elliott, Román, Judy Blotnick, and Heidi Johnson, at 11 a.m., on February 27, and by Hammonds, Cree Bruins, Adrian Carroll, and Jerry Russo, at 11 a.m., on March 6. For information, call (617) 369-3300. " Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow, " is at the Sert Gallery, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (next door to the Fogg Art Museum, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge), from February 15 through May 4. For information call (617) 495-9400.
