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NOVEMBER WWW.FENWAYNEWS.ORG 2015 FREE SERVING THE FENWAY, KENMORE SQUARE, UPPER BACK BAY, PRUDENTIAL, LONGWOOD AREA AND MISSION HILL SINCE 1974 VOLUME 41, NUMBER 11 OCTOBER 30-DECEMBER 4, 2015 Skeptical Opponents Continue to SURPRISE B.U. SALE DECISION CASTS A SHADOW ON HUNTINGTON’S FUTURE PHOTO: HUNTINGTNON THEATER COMPANY HUNTINGTNONPHOTO: THEATER Fight Childrens Hospital Plans BY BARBARA BROOKS SIMONS BY ALISON PULTINAS edge of the domed Hunnewell building. And t’s always a shock when long partner- rotests against the loss of the Prouty The Boston Globe reported late in the month ships break up, especially if they seem Garden at the Boston Children’s that BCH is selling a parcel on Binney St. that to be working just fine. That’s how many Hospital (BCH) continued this fall has all city approvals for an 18-story research subscribers to the Huntington Theatre with lunchtime demonstrations on the laboratory; a 4-story parking garage currently Company reacted to the news that Boston Uni- occupies that site. I sidewalk and a new petition from former and versity and the Huntington are, well, breaking P Previous plans filed with the city current staff, led by Doctors John Mulliken, up—though amicably and by mutual consent. Stephen Gellis and Robert Petersen. Garden proposed replacing the 1970s-era Enders The university is moving its School of Theatre advocates have asked building adjacent design and production programs to its Charles supporters to write to the main BCH River campus. That means it will sell the 890- to Attorney General building with a seat BU Theatre and the adjacent backstage Maura Healey with new clinical care properties on Huntington Avenue. That build- information support- facility and move ing has been home to the Huntington Theatre ing their assertion ALISON PULTINAS PHOTO: research to the north Company for more than 30 years. Both BU that the hospital— side of Longwood students and Huntington staff have used the contrary to public Ave. But something neighboring spaces to create scenery, sets, and statements—did have changed, triggering costumers. The theatre company has gotten The Huntington became one of the an alternative site for the controversial financial support from BU. first US companies to produce the full a new clinical facility decisions related In a joint statement, BU and the “Pittsburgh Cycle” plays by Pulitzer and has rashly cho- to the location of Huntington said that the two institutions have Prize-winning dramatist August sen to demolish the the new clinical plans and needs that they cannot achieve Wilson describing the sweep of African American experience over a century. Prouty Garden and Liz XXXXX and Gus XXXXXX stand vigil at building. And now, within the partnership. The university wants Phyllicia Rashad and Reuben Santiago- the historic 55 Shat- a lunchtime demonstration outside the preserving the to centralize its theatre arts program. It Hudson starred in “Gem of the Ocean” tuck St. building. BCH. “Look around you,” their sign reads, pigs and rabbits in plans to build new facilities on its campus, during the 2004-05 season. On October “There are lots of buildings, but there’s animal facilities including a new theatre. In turn, the theatre 13 the hospital only one Prouty Garden.” (formerly Enders company needs a more modern theatre and they are “eager to revitalize the theatre we’ve administration held a East) is part of public function spaces for its patrons. This called home for those 33 years” and continue public event for staff, families and volunteers the rationale for the bridge over Longwood year, some 130,000 people will see eight to produce ambitious works at that location. in the Garden—essentially a memorial Avenue. As BCH’s chief real estate officer productions at the Huntington Ave. theatre The Huntington Board of Trustees is ready service—called “A Celebration of the Prouty Charles Weinstein implausibly told a (including the brilliant recent staging of A to be a partner in buying or developing the Garden.” There were toasts, prayers, songs Boston Civic Design Commission (BCDC) Little Night Music), and 80, 000 other theatre- properties, including an ambitious capital and reflections by hospital chaplains. Dawn subcommittee, operating-room doctors need to goers will attend shows at the Calderwood campaign to convert the theatre into a “first- redwood seed packets and tiny containers of be close to research animals. Pavilion in the South End. rate, modern venue.” Meanwhile, neighbors Garden soil were distributed. BCH has pursued the pedestrian bridge So what’s ahead for the Huntington? and subscribers hope that the theatre company Two related developments were over Longwood for more than a decade— Although BU has put the theatre and the will continue to be a part of the Fenway’s rich also in the news: on Oct. 15 the Boston apparently the Menino administration did not adjoining buildings on the market, Huntington cultural scene. Redevelopment Authority board unanimously favor the plan—and this year the approval will be able to use the space through 2017. For more on the future of the Huntington approved the construction of a pedestrian process was expedited. Apart from the BCDC The company definitely wants to stay in the Theatre, see p. 5. Barbara Brooks Simons bridge over Longwood Avenue from the review, there were few questions. The BRA’s neighborhood, and will seek to buy the theatre lives in the East Fens and is chair of the patient garage at Blackfan Circle that will 2003 LMA Interim Guidelines designated the either on its own or in a new partnership. In Fenway News Board of Directors (as well as a connect to an expanded main lobby on the CHILDRENS HOSPITAL on page 2 > a message to subscribers, the company said longtime Huntington subscriber). MFA Fixes Its Gaze on Princes, Paupers of 1600s Holland BY JOHN ENGSTROM of oil paintings on canvas, wood and copper, will hang from Feb. 20 to May 29), Class But such things can, in any case, be seen on houghts of money and art (who buys images both formal and informal, group and Distinctions is organized thematically around any day in other parts of the MFA. European what art, for how much, and why?) solo portraits, landscapes, seascapes and issues and nuances of social stratification still lifes from the classical period and will stimulate you as you make your genre scenes—we encounter a heterogeneous in the Netherlands of the 1600s. These 72 later, from Courbet to Beckmann, currently way through the MFA’s sweeping, (though all-white) pictures (a tiny decorate the walls of the Visitor Center, new survey exhibit of 17th-century Dutch art: mass of social fraction of some 5 while interesting works by Class Distinction T types: nobles, million paintings artists De Bray, Hals, Avercamp, Ruisdael and Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer (through Jan. 18). stadtholders, MFA.ORG PHOTO: produced during Rembrandt hang in the MFA’s Netherlandish Despite the big-name draw of the title, there merchants the century) Art galleries on the second floor. The exhibit’s really are some choice Rembrandts (two from and merchant- were not made lone watercolor is Adriaen van de Venne’s the MFA’s collection) and Vermeers (from tycoons, soldiers at the behest of “The Winter King and Queen” from 1625- distinguished lenders) on hand for their fans and regents, King or Church. 26, an allegory of Protestant dominion over to ogle. But with 72 paintings (my count) on shipbuilders, After its citizens Europe that shares its subject matter with the walls in a quartet of enormous rooms, you ministers and kicked out the another MFA holding, Gerrit van Honthorst’s can also enjoy works by those famous artist’s tailors, prostitutes Spanish, northern grandiose oil “Triumph of the Winter Queen” luminous contemporaries: Anthony van Dyck, and housewives, Holland was not a of 1636. Jan Steen, Frans Hals, Gerard ter Borch, maids and possession of the The initial rooms of the exhibit “take it Pieter de Hooch, Jacob van Ruisdael, Adriaen princesses, Catholic empire from the top” with a flourish of aristocrats. Brouwer, and others of lesser fame but of no sailors and but a self-sufficient Depicted in the portraits and group scenes less piercing vision. paupers, haves republic, and Dutch are regents, a burgomaster, an alderman, Experienced together, these artists and have-nots, Reformed was two textile magnates, two stadtholders, a open up a collective portrait of the glorious, the one percent the state religion. stadtholder’s secretary, a book publisher, abundant, messy ferment of culture and and everybody These works were military officers, a city councilman, an creativity that was Holland in the 17th century, else. created for private importer of cloth from the East Indies during one of Western art’s most prodigious Splendidly buyers, from the (Indonesia), a merchant trader specializing explosions of aesthetic energy. The leading co-curated by upper tiers down in Russia and the Baltic, and a lawyer. Such artists of the day, with their feeling for human the MFA’s Ronni to those of modest pictures demonstrate the fact that certain characterization and spiritual atmosphere Baer and Ian “Ermgard Elisabeth van Dorth” (1624) by means. “The period human symbols of global capitalism—for and insight, transformed their Zeitgeist into Kennedy of the Paulus Moreelse of the oil painting,” example, the obscenely rich tycoon, the timeless images that simmer, persist and Nelson-Atkins writes critic John Berger “trophy wife”—haven’t left us. glow in the mind and memory. As we move Museum of Art in Ways of Seeing, John Berger argues that it was Frans Hals among the pictures—an engrossing assembly in Kansas City, Missouri (where the show “corresponds with the rise of the open art (represented here by group and solo portraits) market….