Join us Monday, 6 January 2025 at 12:30PM ET for a conversation with:
Jim Schantz – Pucker Gallery Artist
Mark Ludwig – Executive Director and Founder of the Terezín Music Foundation
Mara Williams - Brattleboro Museum Curator Emerita
Dr. Carl Herbert – Gallery Associate
Bernard Pucker – Gallery Director
This WebinART will be an opportunity to discuss Jim Schantz's latest collection of new work. With Nature as his inspiration, he continues to present the natural world in all her poetic splendor.
The exhibition Inspired Transcendence will be on view at Pucker Gallery from 11 January through 23 February 2025.
About Our Panelists...
Jim Schantz is a landscape painter whose work focuses primarily on the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. Throughout his nearly forty-year painting career, nature has been a constant source of inspiration. Schantz received his BFA from Syracuse University, his MFA from UC Davis, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Brooklyn Museum School, and the Hornsey School of Art in London. He has taught painting in numerous institutions. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. He has exhibited his work extensively since the 1970s and has been represented by Pucker Gallery since 1988. His works are included in museums and public collections throughout the United States. Schantz has participated in numerous art and music collaborations with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Hawthorne String Quartet at Tanglewood, Skidmore College, the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in Prague, Czech Republic, and Boston College. He has collaborated on two CDs with flutist Paula Robison (Places of the Spirit: The Holy Land and Places of the Spirit). He is married to Kim Saul, an artist from western Massachusetts.
Mark Ludwig, Executive Director and Founder of Terezín Music Foundation, is a Boston Symphony Orchestra member emeritus who blends his musical career with social causes promoting tolerance. He has performed on numerous CDs and in concerts to benefit causes. For his global outreach efforts, Mr. Ludwig was nominated to be a UNESCO Artist-for-PEACE and Goodwill Ambassador. Mr. Ludwig founded the Terezín Music Foundation in 1991. A Fulbright scholar of the Terezín composers, he has authored essays, program notes, and a Holocaust curriculum for schools. Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and Charles University in Prague are among the many schools where Mr. Ludwig has appeared as a guest lecturer. Since 2001 he has been Adjunct Professor at Boston College, teaching the course “Art and Music During the Holocaust and Third Reich." In addition to serving on the Terezín Memorial Museum Advisory Board, Mr. Ludwig has consulted for numerous international cultural organizations and symphony orchestras. He has participated as an artist, consultant, and producer in recordings produced by London DECCA and TMF. NPR, BBC World Radio, and ABC World News have showcased the work of Mr. Ludwig and TMF. Mr. Ludwig is retired from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he had been a tenured violist since 1982.
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. As a partner in Arts Bridge LLC, Williams leads exhibition teams for institutions developing new large-scale museum projects. 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 Mr. 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 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.