Programming Archive

In an all-new episode of The Business Beat, Steve D'Agostino, chief pilot of Best Rate of Climb, interviews Matthias Waschek, director of the Worcester Art Museum. They talk about the intersection of art and business in the new economy.

In November 2011, Waschek arrived at the 116-year-old Worcester Art Museum as its new director, with an international career of 20 years in the art world. He replaced James Welu, who is now director emeritus of the museum as part of a 41-year career there – 25, as director.

As director of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, Waschek built that institution’s structure and shaped its identity as both locally anchored by and nationally recognized for its exhibitions and programming. Before moving to the United States, he was head of Academic Programs at the Louvre Museum in Paris. There, he conceived and led lecture series and symposia around collections and exhibitions, to interface between academia, the museum world and the general public.

With a Ph.D. from Bonn University on French Symbolism, Wascheck first published and lectured widely about art and artists of the second half of the 19th century. His field of scholarly work and publications broadened during his tenure at the Louvre, including proceedings of a symposium on artists’ lives, a study on Rubens’ Medici Cycle, and, for broader audiences, “What is a Masterwork?”

As director and curator of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Waschek created award-winning web-catalogs, notably “Brancusi and Serra in Dialogue,”  “Portrait/Hommage/Embodiment,” and “Ideal (Dis-)Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer.” A book on Ann Hamilton’s “stylus” installation, which he curated in 2010, was published at the end of 2012.

Waschek has broad experience in communicating with and about art, as:

• A professor of art history, notably at Parsons Paris – then part of the New School for Social Research in New York City – and the école du Louvre
• A regular guest lecturer at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, the université de La Rochelle, and others
• The initiator of a ground-breaking collaboration with the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, which combined questions of art experience with those of social integration

Read now: Steve D'Agostino's GoLocalWorcester article, "Worcester Art Museum’s Waschek Moves Aggressively Into New Era"

“Looking dapper in a gray suit and a red tie that would finish the set draped loosely around his neck,” writes The Washington Post, “Palmieri took his seat at the piano and alighted on a delicate arpeggio. A slow smile crept across the 76-year-old’s face as lyrical phrases evolved into blues riffs, which then gave way to staccato splashes .. [He] even stood up to give the audience an endearing peek at his salsa dancing skills.”

The 2013 NEA Jazz Master told his DC audience, “If there’s an iota of wisdom that I have, it’s that I don’t think my music might excite you; I know it will.”

Review by Jess Righthand

You may think you know a definition of life, but you would be wrong. Many biologists and scientists are struggling to come up with a theory of life that we can test. In recent decades bacteria have been discovered living in hot springs in temperatures high enough to cook all other life. Life has now been found living in sulphur springs, in caustic soda lakes, deep in the earth’s crust and even in the salt lakes. All places we thought life could never exist. But these extremophile forms of life are only the beginning. Supposed there is life not based on the Carbon atom? Could there be Silicon life? Or could there be life that uses Arsenic? Is it possible there is life that lives in hydrogen fluoride or sulphuric acid or ammonia? The answers may surprise you. Tonight we talk with DAVID TOOMEY, associate professor of English and the Director of the Professional Writing and Technical Communication Program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His new book WEIRD LIFE: THE SEARCH FOR LIFE THAT IS VERY, VERY DIFFERENT FROM OUR OWN will change the way you think about “life”.  

Rudresh Mahanthappa creates an explosive blend of South Indian classical music and progressive jazz. Named the Jazz Journalists Association's "Alto Saxophonist of the Year" for four years running, his innovative music reflects his experience as a second-generation Indian-American and has made him a Guggenheim fellow. He shares his fascinating style and story on this edition of Piano Jazz.