>> Everybody's like contributing to it.

It feels like there's, like, a community behind me because I couldn't do it without my mom, without my family, without all these people that make these amazing fabrics that I use.

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio-- at the Museum of Fine Arts, it's a quilting sea.

Then one-on-one with the Boston Symphony Orchestra's new president and C.E.O., Gail Samuel.

>> I think the question for us is how do we come out of this pandemic focused on what we uniquely need to be focused on and not assuming that everything that we have been and everything that we have done continues.

>> BOWEN: Plus the I.C.A.

opens a Kusama Infinity Mirror Room of its own.

>> It's almost like a garden of color and forms, tentacles.

>> BOWEN: And confessions of a cartoonist.

>> Editorial cartoon is a cartoon with a point of view, trying to find a little bit of humor in it.

It might not be funny, but many times, you know, I'm hoping that it is.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: We begin the show at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

That's where you'll find a patchwork of American stories assembled one quilt at a time.

Of the nation's art forms, it's among the most deeply embedded.

Quilts.

Not that we, or even some of the most acclaimed quilters have always recognized that.

>> Looking around the house, we always had quilts.

Either maybe on the couch or on the wall, which is crazy to me, because I never looked at them as like art objects.

>> BOWEN: But after leaving a career as a college basketball player behind and realizing another career in photojournalism was not for him, a year and a half ago, artist Michael C. Thorpe began quilting, something he'd always watched his mother Susan Richards do.

>> She got a quilting machine, and I started playing around with it, and then started to understand that I could use that as like painting.

And that's when it just exploded because she showed me everything, and then I just like took it from there.

>> BOWEN: And it's landed him here, in the Museum of Fine Arts, as one of the artists featured in the exhibition Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories.

Thorpe's quilts are normally colorful and joyous.

But he made this piece the day after George Floyd's murder.

>> Basically, I kept coming back to like, what do people think of like Black men?

And a lot of this came from putting the burden on like the audience, you know, because everyone was talking about like Black people are always burdened with telling people about the situation, living through the situation.

And I was just like I want to relieve myself of that and give it to the audience.

>> I think if we can agree on anything, it's the story of our nation is a complicated one, and we're... we're living that now.

>> BOWEN: Jennifer Swope curated this show and traces how the history of America has been woven together in quilts spanning centuries.

>> There's always the incredible story of the American Quilting Bee where early suffragists came together and plotted (laughing): to... to expand the franchise of voting or to promote the ideas of abolitionism.

And that's deeply baked into the idea of the American quilt.

>> BOWEN: Quilts told the story of cotton and corduroy landscapes, of rural family life, and of trauma.

>> We have Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi's work Strange Fruit II, which is about the song that was popularized by Billie Holiday, which is graphically gut-wrenching.

>> ♪ Southern trees ♪ ♪ Bears strange fruit ♪ >> It shows lynched bodies on a tree.

It shows Ku Klux Klan figures.

And that will give people pause and rightly so.

>> BOWEN: But artist Bisa Butler's quilt is halting for its shimmering portraits of Atlanta's Morris Brown College baseball team from 1899.

How masterful is this piece?

It's so layered.

It's layered in theme, it's layered in practice.

>> I think layered is the perfect word to use.

What I think she really wants people to do is to look carefully at each of these figures and recognize their individual humanity.

And she does that really by creating these portraits in color and cloth.

>> BOWEN: Here we also find one gallery transformed into a virtual temple.

It features the only known surviving quilts by Harriet Powers, side-by-side, for the first time.

>> She's an icon.

What she was able to achieve is astounding.

>> BOWEN: A former enslaved woman, Powers is considered the mother of African American quilting.

She renders life lessons in this pictorial quilt from the late 1890s.

But it was her Bible Quilt, sewn a decade earlier, that made Powers a sensation after it was exhibited in an Atlanta fair visited by nearly a million people, including then President Grover Cleveland.

>> These were the offsprings of her brain as she described them.

And they were precious to her.

And she brought such deep thinking.

Like her whole cosmology is part of those works of art.

There is nothing unplanned, not deliberate about these two pieces.

>> BOWEN: As a strong tradition of quilting bees reminds us, quilts are commonly communal efforts.

Gee's Bend is an Alabama community that's taken on nearly mythical proportions for a quilting tradition that has passed from generation to generation since the 19th century.

>> Aesthetically, the quilts of Gee's Bend are incredibly special.

People have described the quilts of Gee's Bend as the product of what we might think of as a school of art in a sense that it was a tight community.

>> BOWEN: Community prevails in these works-- even for artists like Thorpe, who work independently.

>> It takes a village to, like, make anything.

And literally every piece of fabric I get may come from my aunt's quilt shop, may come from just like a local fabric store.

But it takes all these people.

Everybody's like contributing to it.

It feels like there's like a community behind me.

Because I couldn't do it without my mom, without my family, without all these people that make these amazing fabrics that I use.

>> BOWEN: Allowing for stitches that in time render the fabric of a nation.

♪ ♪ At long last the Boston Symphony Orchestra is back.

♪ ♪ That was from the BSO's recent free concert welcoming live audiences back to Symphony Hall.

And for the first time in more than 20 years, the BSO is also welcoming a new leader.

She is Gail Samuel, the orchestra's new president and C.E.O.

She arrives from Los Angeles where she had longtime leadership roles at both the L.A. Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl.

Gail Samuel, thank you so much for being here.

>> Thank you.

It's a pleasure.

>> BOWEN: Well, you are just getting started.

You've only been here a few months.

I won't truly grill-grill you, (Gail laughing) but tell us how you see the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

You come from Los Angeles.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> BOWEN: We know all the things it is.

It's a great orchestra, it's internationally renowned.

But as you come in, how do you see it?

>> To understand the place the Boston Symphony Orchestra has in the arts community in Boston and the community at large has been really interesting.

It fills a big space in that community.

And what I'm thinking about is how it how it can refocus and be a bigger part of the broader community in Boston.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Well what does that mean to you?

I know when leaders come in they take some time before implementing change.

And what does being more mindful of the community mean?

>> Yeah, I mean for me, so I think about the broad communities of Boston.

So... so whether that is students, whether it is sort of the established New England communities or, you know, communities of color in, in our city and thinking about how we can engage deeply across the, the breadth of those communities.

>> BOWEN: Well, this is something I know is kind of standard out in Los Angeles.

Everybody plays well in the sandbox.

That doesn't always happen here in Boston.

Do you feel that?

Do you feel that responsibility as one of the largest arts organization in the area?

>> Sure, I do.

And I think for me, you know, words that I'm focused on also are collaboration and partnership.

You know, you're right, I think...

I think in L.A. there's-there's a very... there's kind of a different... just a different perspective.

Or as...

I liked the way you put that, playing together in the sandbox.

And I don't quite think I understand yet what that, what that looks like here.

But certainly hope to be seen as sort of reaching out and opening doors.

>> BOWEN: Well, this is probably also a good moment to talk about the whiteness at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

There's been a lot of conversation, especially over the last couple of years, about how Euro-centric the programing is, how, how white the audience is.

And you don't see a lot of diversity necessarily within the Hall.

How do you begin to change that?

>> Yeah, there's a lot of-of... a lot of parts to that, and I think that we have to think about it... think about diversity on all... in all levels of our organization.

I think for me, coming in as the first woman leader of the BSO in its, you know, in its history is, is one piece of that.

But it certainly can't stop there.

I think we need to think about, you know, our staffing.

I think we need to think about the artists on stage and, and we need to think about how we are welcoming to, to everybody.

Everybody doesn't have to want to engage with us, but everyone should feel welcome to.

♪ ♪ You know, the Boston Symphony is this amazing, wonderful ensemble.

And in order to be welcoming, people need to see themselves reflected on our stages.

So whether that means women on the podium, whether that means more artists of color broadening our commissions and, and the work with different composers, which I think we have been... we have been making... making strides in that area, certainly in our programing at Tanglewood over the summer.

You know, we call it equity, diversity, and inclusion work.

And it's... and it's work.

(laughs) And, you know, it doesn't just happen.

>> BOWEN: Coming out of the pandemic, how is the health of the organization?

We know that, like many organizations, it had to undergo layoffs, more than $50 million in losses.

What do people come back to find?

>> Yeah, you know, I think we're seeing the same thing that, that so many industries and businesses are seeing right now, right?

I think the question for us is, how do we come out of this pandemic focused on what we uniquely need to be focused on?

And not assuming that everything that we have been and everything that we have done continues or, or, you know, needs to take exactly the same path.

>> BOWEN: And we've all changed in this.

We've changed as individuals.

We've changed as organizations.

The show has changed.

(laughing): I'm sitting so far away from you right now.

>> (laughing): Hello.

>> BOWEN (laughing): Exactly.

I'll send paper airplane questions if you can't hear me.

But you wonder, does music change after the pandemic?

We know that people will be reluctant to go back into big spaces.

We don't know how long we'll be wearing masks.

And, thankfully, you are requiring vaccines in order to attend.

But is it a different thing now?

>> Yeah, you know, I will say-- and I know Tanglewood is maybe a different experience because it is outdoors and it just all feels very outdoors.

I was surprised at the pace at which people seemed to get comfortable and delighted by it.

I hope that when people start coming into the Hall, the experience feels a bit different.

You know, the the orchestra will still be sitting on stage, and making incredible music, and with Andris, and with our wonderful soloists.

And I, I do have a hope that, you know, once people start coming, there, there will be increased interest in coming back.

And we are certainly seeing that from, from data across the country.

>> BOWEN: We've mentioned L.A. a couple of times, but you have a history here.

You have a history with Tanglewood and the BSO.

You were a student here.

So what's it like to be back?

>> My first few days walking around the grounds at Tanglewood, things were kind of quiet.

We hadn't had a live audience yet.

And just walking across the lawn, kind of in that quiet space, and looking... you know, looking at a building I'd seen decades ago and knowing my office was in that building, it was... it was like very familiar and kind of really surreal also.

>> BOWEN: And finally, we know what your job is, we know what the role is, but how do you, as you settle in now, how do you see yourself in this role?

>> I'm so fascinated to begin to understand Boston better.

And I think that that is actually a big part of my responsibility.

I think coming to an organization like the BSO, and a city like Boston with, with an outsider's eyes, it leaves me a lot to learn.

And that's where I think there's great joy starting to get to know my colleagues who lead other arts organizations, to understand, you know, where my kids go to school and what, what everything feels like.

That feels like a big part of my responsibility, because it's by doing that that I can help figure out, I mean, determine where the BSO fits into that, where the BSO can best fit into that in a way to be, to be a resource to the community.

So I think it's that piece of understanding, is, I think, what feels like the big task in front of me, to, in order to chart that path forward.

>> BOWEN: Thank you so much for being with us.

>> It's my pleasure, thank you so much for having me.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Shaker spirit takes hold at the Fruitlands Museum, one of many events to top your calendar in Arts This Week.

♪ ♪ Visit the Cape Cod Museum of Art Sunday for Visions 2021: Found, Formed, Fused, featuring works crafted from media ranging from rubber to recycled plastic bags.

The film West Side Story was released 60 years ago Monday.

Showcasing the timeless music of Leonard Bernstein, the film won ten Academy Awards, the most ever by a musical.

Tuesday, the Fruitlands Museum presents Unseen Hours: Space Clearing for Spirit Work, a multimedia exhibition derived from Shaker artifacts and history.

Join the Borromeo String Quartet Thursday for a performance of two Beethoven quartets and a pre-concert discussion about the composer's manuscripts.

Saturday, Boston Baroque presents its season premiere program available to both in-person audiences and virtual ones.

It features works by Handel and Ravel.

Next, it's not often that museums experience theme-park-sized lines and attendance.

But that does happen wherever there's an Infinity Mirror Room by Yayoi Kusama.

The I.C.A.

has acquired her largest and it reopens this weekend.

So we make room for this piece we first brought you in 2019.

>> (speaking Japanese) >> BOWEN: The grave, gravelly voice of artist Yayoi Kusama fills this Infinity Mirror Room.

Inside, inflatable sculptures sway.

It's populated by polka dots, and its matrix of mirrors make it feel cavernous at its smallest and a portal to another universe at its largest.

>> It's almost like a garden of color and... And forms, tentacles, right?

This underwater or celestial garden.

>> BOWEN: Jill Medvedow is the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, which recently acquired this room, Kusama's largest, titled Love Is Calling.

But it's love and death which fill this room, in the poem the Japanese artist wrote and is heard reciting.

>> Life, loss, death, love are, you know, the big themes that drive so, so much art, and so much of us, right?

In our joys and in our fears.

And Kusama gets that.

And she doesn't shy away from it.

It's, she's a vulnerable artist.

>> BOWEN: Much has been made of the artist's vulnerability.

Now 90 years old, Kusama has willingly lived in a psychiatric hospital since the 1970s.

There, she has been as prolific as her polka dots, which tie directly to a childhood of abuse and the hallucinations she's experienced throughout her life.

The dots and the sense of infinity are Kusama's way of what she describes as obliterating herself.

>> She's opening up a path to another consciousness.

You know, her notion of the self-obliteration and her use of the polka dots are completely related.

The polka dot, she refers to it as herself connected to all of the other dots, all of the other cosmos, into, you know, a real sense of oneness.

>> BOWEN: Whether museum visitors go deep or just stay on the surface taking selfies, Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms have become major attractions over the last decade.

Patrons make pilgrimages.

The Kusama retrospective at the Hirshhorn in Washington broke the museum's all-time attendance records, even though visitors are limited to minutes-- sometimes even seconds-- inside.

That, by the way, is directed by Kusama herself.

>> The Infinity Room arrived with a 150-page manual.

And that is exceedingly specific.

That comes from her studio.

But she has a say even in the placement of the dots on the graphics when you walk in.

She cares deeply about the control of her art and her image.

And her legacy, I believe.

>> She's so much more than just an Instagram phenomenon.

>> BOWEN: Eva Respini is the chief curator at the I.C.A., which first showed a Kusama Infinity Mirror Room in 1966.

>> Kusama is, I think, in short, the most important and influential artist of our time.

She has influenced virtually every art movement of the 20th century: pop art, minimalism, performance art, feminist art.

She's an artist that presages everything that we see today.

>> BOWEN: Kusama first came to the United States in the 1950s after boldly writing to Georgia O'Keeffe, asking how to launch her career.

O'Keeffe advised Kusama to come to the U.S. She did, quickly befriending artists like Donald Judd, Joseph Cornell, and Eva Hesse.

>> She gets involved with happenings, with protests, she makes sort of immersive, performative kinds of works in addition to painting, sculpture.

She's in social circles with Andy Warhol.

>> BOWEN: Respini charts Kusama's early career in this companion exhibition.

Kusama's 1965 Blue Coat could be woven into what artists Tara Donovan or Nick Cave and his famed Soundsuits would do decades later.

Her rooms make way for the work of artist Josiah McElheny.

Kusama wasn't just ahead of her time, she was infinitely ahead of it.

>> The first Infinity Mirror Room that she made, 1965.

We're now in the experience economy, we know about immersive environments, we know about large-scale sculpture.

This is something we know, but '65, that's a really radical idea.

>> BOWEN: The blueprint for it all could be here, in a very early Kusama work from 1953.

How exciting is it to see the beginning here?

>> I think very exciting, and in a way, you could imagine, if you were able to kind of step into this drawing, maybe it would be like what it's like to step into Love Is Calling.

You know, a lot of those elements are there.

Not to say this is an origin drawing, but I do think there are many points within this drawing that kind of lead us to where she is now.

>> BOWEN: Which is an artist who's always given herself the room to evolve.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: We end now with the funny pages.

Jeff Stahler is an editorial cartoonist whose syndicated comic, Moderately Confused, is seen in newspapers all over the country.

But when he's not poking fun at the foibles of daily life, he can often be found capturing it in watercolor.

♪ ♪ >> Watercolor is the toughest medium.

You can't back up, once you've started you cannot put another color on top of it, it makes mud, so you have to work very fast.

A plein air is the artist that will work in the environment, they're outdoors, typically.

Plein air is a French word, it means outdoor painter, and I started doing it only about four or five years ago.

Schiller Park is a beautiful park.

It's a 22-acre park that sits in German Village.

It's a park that attracts a lot of dogs, a lot of people, a lot of walkers, a lot of runners.

♪ ♪ It's so nice to plein air paint because you get outside, you get away from it all, it's very relaxing, it's... not that the cartooning is, it's just a whole different animal.

♪ ♪ I am a graduate of the Columbus College of Art and Design.

I graduated in advertising with an illustration minor.

I worked for several years in advertising.

But I always wanted to cartoon.

I did some cartooning for a magazine, actually a weekly newspaper in Columbus, Ohio.

I was able to open another door and it opened for me in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And I was a cartoonist for them, the Cincinnati Post, for 22 years.

Editorial cartoon is a cartoon with a point of view, trying to find a little bit of humor in it.

But typically, it's going to fall on an opinion page so it wants to have, an editor wants to have opinion with, associated with the cartoon.

It might not be funny, but many times it, you know, I'm hoping that it is.

♪ ♪ When I got into editorial cartooning, back in the early '80s, I think I was right at the beginning of the Reagan administration.

So I've worked through all the presidents since him.

And they're all a challenge, and some of them are easier than others.

I started as a one-panel cartoonist doing editorial cartoons.

And so I got that science of that type of gag down.

I felt very comfortable then moving on to doing Moderately Confused, which is social commentary on a different level, but appearing on comic pages.

I'm contracted to do three to four editorial cartoons every week, and I do six daily panels for Moderately Confused, so it's a total of nine cartoons that I ... nine to ten cartoons I do every week.

I work four weeks in advance on Moderately Confused, whereas an editorial cartoon, I do it, I put it out the next day.

♪ ♪ You have to have thick skin in this business but, you know, it's so rewarding, it's so much fun.

And people always ask, you know, "So what's your favorite cartoon?"

And it's the one I did today.

(chuckles) ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week we visit the sculptures lighting up the night sky in Gloucester.

>> You're walking through a field, and there are fireflies all around you twinkling, it's like walking through a starfield.

>> BOWEN: Then a visit with unlikely duo Tony winner Alan Cumming and NPR's Ari Shapiro.

>> It was showtunes night at a D.C. gay bar called J.R.'s.

And Alan stood on the interior balcony and flung napkins down on the crowd during "Don't Cry For Me Argentina."

>> BOWEN: Until then, I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

And as always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @OpenStudioGBH.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪