December is one of those sneaky months, suddenly coming upon unsuspecting students, bearing the stress and dread of finals and deadlines. Beyond academic pressure, there is holiday shopping to be done and preparations to be made within the few weeks spent at school.
This weekend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston offers the perfect solution for these inevitable winter woes with their 25th Annual December Sale. It is the largest public art sale in New England - this year, it features over 4,000 works by 700 alumni, students, faculty and staff of the Museum School. Admission is free, so a trip to the sale can be a way to go holiday shopping, an opportunity to find an original work to brighten up a dorm room in winter months or simply an exhibit to see on the last real weekend before finals.
The December Sale expands across the entire ground floor of the school. Through the atrium, auditorium and gallery, works line over 7,000 square feet of display space. From Dec. 1 to 5 the exhibition will rotate, continuously replacing sold works with new ones. As the days progress, the display will change dramatically.
Open today through Monday from noon to 6 p.m., the sale offers an eclectic array of works, from paintings, sculptures and photographs, to clothing, handmade greeting cards and jewelry at a broad range of prices. Each artist is allowed to submit a maximum of two framed or hanging pieces, as well as up to four shrink-wrapped works, which are arranged alphabetically for visitors to easily browse through in the main entrance of the Museum School. The pieces in shrink-wrap are generally lower in price and are guaranteed to be in the show, making it easier to find the work of a specific artist who may have caught your attention.
Joanna Soltan, the curator for the school, looks at both of an artist's submitted hanging works and chooses the first one to go up, the one most "representative of the artist's work." Not all 700 artists can be on display at once, so Soltan carefully picks the works based on the overall presentation of the show. She considers how the works play off each other, making sure that one does not overwhelm the other and each "gets its chance to shine."
Generally, she is not concerned with the status of the artist, whether it is the work of a student, faculty member or alumni, and she usually doesn't worry about the prices. Only if a student is particularly unaware as to what an appropriate price is (or is attached and deliberately overprices something) and it does not sell does Soltan decide to replace it with another artist's work, likely someone whose work is not yet on exhibit.
Tufts' Combined Degree Program students already have work on display, including the unique acrylic paintings of Brian Gershey, a third-year student at the Museum School whose work evokes a kind of colorful humor, Darren Miller and Lindsay Walsh's photography, Angelica Vanasse's blown glass work and Carlos Noguera's wooden pieces, which protrude out of the wall in abstract sculptural forms.
The jewelry counter presents a stunning array of handmade, inimitable pieces. Among them is the delicate work of a fourth-year student, Nick Cintas, who blurs the line between art and earrings, crafted in white gold and sterling silver.
The works are listed at as little as $2 for handmade cards to thousands of dollars for works created by some of the school's more renowned artists, according to Museum School spokesperson Sarah Wheeler. The average piece is listed at $200, and the revenues from the sales are divided evenly between the artists and the school, which will use the proceeds for scholarships for students. Last year's sale brought in $750,000.
Of the 700 artists, 241 are Museum School students. "This number includes Tufts/SMFA undergraduate and graduate students, but also includes students enrolled in the Museum School Diploma and Certificate programs," Wheeler said.
The most remarkable characteristic of the December Sale is that with such an extensive assortment of student and alumni artwork, it hardly matters that hidden modestly in the back of the gallery are works by "big-name" artists like Chuck Close, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelley (an alumnus of the Museum School) and Jim Dine. Kelley donated six pieces, all on display, including two black lithographs entitled "The Seine" and "The Hudson," going for $5,000 each.
While the stressed out college student may not be able to afford a Chuck Close, the December Sale is an exciting event, a way to see what the students of the Museum School - which is closely affiliated with Tufts - are creating, and maybe even to pick out an up-and-coming artist. It may be more reasonable to shop among the handmade cards, small books, change purses, clothes and jewelry for thoughtful holiday gifts (or maybe a self-given reward for all that studying ahead).
Christopher Charron contributed to this article.
