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Please join us Monday, 30 October 2023 at 1:00PM EDT for a conversation with Pucker Gallery artist Samuel Bak, Brattleboro Museum Curator Emerita Mara Williams, Gallery Associate Dr. Carl Herbert, and Gallery Director Bernie Pucker.
This event will be an opportunity to enjoy and learn from the artist who, at 90, has curated an exhibition of this body of work as well as the insights and questions from Mara Williams and the in-depth responses of Dr. Carl Herbert. The conversation will be guided (or focused occasionally) by the Gallery Director. This webinART will be a wonderful chance to learn more about Bak's work from multiple perspectives.
The exhibition Bak Looks Back, Artist Curated Collection: 1946-2023 will be on view at Pucker Gallery from 21 October through 3 December 2023.
Samuel Bak was born on August 12, 1933 in Vilna, Poland at a crucial moment in modern history. From 1940 to 1944, Vilna was under Soviet, then German occupation. While he and his mother survived, his father and four grandparents all perished at the hands of the Nazis. At the end of the war, he fled with his mother to the Landsberg Displaced Persons Camp, where he enrolled in painting lessons at the Blocherer School in Munich. In 1948, they immigrated to the newly established state of Israel. He studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem and completed his mandatory service in the Israeli army. In 1956, he went to Paris to continue his education at the École des Beaux Arts.
In 1959, he moved to Rome where his first exhibition of abstract paintings was met with considerable success. In 1961, he was invited to exhibit at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, followed by solo exhibitions at the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Museums in 1963. It was after these exhibitions that a major change in his art occurred. There was a distinct shift from abstraction to a metaphysical figurative means of expression. Ultimately, this transformation crystallized into his present pictorial language.
Bak has exhibited extensively in major museums, galleries, and universities throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States. He has been the subject of articles, scholarly works, and over twenty books, most notably a 400-page monograph entitled Between Worlds. This year his biography entitled Art & Life: The Story of Samuel Bak was published. A 2020 exhibition at University of Nebraska Omaha led to the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, which opened Phase One at UNO earlier this year. Phase Two envisions a brand new, state-of-the-art, free-standing facility to house over 500 works donated by Bak.
Mara Williams assumed Emerita status in 2021, after curating exhibits at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center for thirty-three years. Her area of expertise is modern and contemporary art. Recent solo exhibitions include: Gathering Light: The Art of Stephen Hannock; Wolf Kahn—Landscape of Light; Secrets by Gloria Garfinkel; Andy Warhol—Selections from the Jon Gould Collection. Group shows have included the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Janet Fish, Mary Frank, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Maya Lin, James McGarrell, David Nash, Robert Rauschenberg, Ursula von Ridingsvard, Michael Singer, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Barbara Zucker, as well as a host of regional and emerging talent.
As a partner in Arts Bridge LLC, Williams leads exhibition teams for institutions developing new large-scale museum projects. She led a team at Norwich University to conceive and build the inaugural exhibits and media productions at the Sullivan Museum & History Center; she was the exhibition developer and project manager for the Vermont Historical Society's interactive exhibit and film, Freedom & Unity: One Ideal, Many Stories; she developed Bravo! A Century of Theatre in Fairfield County; and a number of exhibits for the Vermont Folklife Center.
She holds an A.B. in theatre from Boston College; an MFA in museology from Syracuse University and has completed doctoral course work and passed comprehensives in comparative arts at New York University. She is Chair of the Wolf Kahn Foundation. She has served as chair of the Vermont Arts Council and as a board member of the New England Museum Association, as well as three terms on the Senate Curatorial Advisory Committee for the U.S. Capitol.
Dr. Carl Herbert is a fourth-generation physician whose career has been devoted to helping infertility patients overcome a wide spectrum of obstacles to create their families. Early in his career he participated in the founding of one of the first eIVF centers in the United States. For more than forty years, Dr. Herbert has contributed to the growth and development of assisted reproductive technologies, continually implementing the evolving techniques and optimizing their clinical applications for care. The ambiguity of a socially awkward accolade, “You got me pregnant!”, has become a recurrent reward, both humorous and joyful. By serendipity, Dr. Herbert walked into Pucker Gallery for the first time in 1985 when visiting Boston for a medical conference. From this point on, his nascent interest in art grew under the generous tutelage and encouragement of Bernie Pucker. A close personal friendship evolved as they visited artists and exhibitions around the world; exchanged thoughts on the experience and intrinsic value that art, in all its many forms, can provide individuals and society; and shared writings which illuminated these principles.
Bernie Pucker is the director of the Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Boston's historic Newbury Street in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “WebinArts,” and Gallery receptions. Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he has served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School, President of the Newbury Street League, and Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others. Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.