It’s a quiet time of year for the performing arts in our region, so my suggestion is to take advantage of that and set your sites on what’s inside the region’s best galleries and museums. As it just happens, exhibitions at the three major art institutions in the Berkshires all speak to each other from various vantage points, beginning with Frank E. Schoonover: American Visions, at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. Schoonover’s legendary adventure paintings were inspired by the belief that artists should live what they paint. He lived among the Blackfeet Indians of the northern plains, and with Alaskan Eskimos to experience, first-hand, the world portrayed in Jack London’s To Build a Fire, a short story about a protagonist who ventures out in the sub-zero tundras of the Yukon Territory accompanied only by his dog. The artist’s wilderness experiences would inspire his art throughout his career, making authentic portrayals of the far reaches of America possible.
