>> JARED BOWEN: Welcome to Open Studio, WGBH's weekly spotlight on arts and culture from around the region and the nation.

I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio, the story of how the Shaw Memorial depicting Black Civil War soldiers was made and now restored.

>> We have a grand opportunity once this is restored to expand the narrative of American history.

>> BOWEN: Then opera rises in The Fall of the House of Usher.

(trio singing) >> BOWEN: Plus the industrial aesthetic.

>> This is a very sculpture-centric show, and each of these pieces will likely look very different according to the differing context that they're presented in.

>> BOWEN: And find a hitchin' post.

We visit a cowboy museum.

>> Cowboys like their bling.

Bling is nothing new in the cowboy world.

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

♪ ♪ First up, in a moment in which statues and monuments around the country are being removed for what they represent, the Shaw Memorial in Boston is receiving scrutiny of a different sort.

It's being fully restored, with pride that the monument depicting Black soldiers marching off to battle in the Civil War stands the test of time.

For nearly 125 years, the Shaw Memorial has stood across from the Massachusetts State House.

It depicts Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers of the 54th Regiment-- one of the first groups of Black troops formed during the Civil War-- as they march off to battle.

>> I see men who are determined to have their freedom and the freedom of those who are coming after them and their families.

So for me, it is a, a walk to triumph.

>> BOWEN: L'Merchie Frazier, director of education for the Museum of African American History, is a consultant on the monument's current restoration.

For the moment, bronze has been replaced by photographic brawn.

Do you still make discoveries when you look at the pictures?

>> Oh, absolutely.

There's a reveal that happens almost every time.

That, you know, you find the mastery of the angel and components of the flight that she's taken to guard the men and to protect.

>> BOWEN: Right now, the real thing is taking the winter lying down.

Since August, the monument been at Skylight Studios, a wonderland of sculpture.

Here, statuary abounds, from a horse approaching the size of a Trojan one to the gold eagle normally perched atop Boston's Old State House.

But the pièce de résistance, of course, is the monument which Robert Shure and his team have been conserving for months.

>> We totally, um, stripped all the previous coatings that were on it, and refinished it, repatinated it.

>> BOWEN: This is a $3 million effort sponsored by the National Park Service, Friends of Boston's Public Garden, the City of Boston, and the Museum of African American History.

At Skylight, conservators take the project piece by piece, shoring up the seams of the monument's some 20 different parts.

>> A couple of nuts and bolts missing, but it was in structurally great condition for a piece that was over 100 years old.

>> BOWEN: The monument is the creation of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who originally intended to depict the colonel astride his horse.

But after Shaw's family of abolitionists asked the artist to also depict the men who elevated Shaw's fame, Saint-Gaudens turned the project into a 14-year endeavor, laboring over details, some which can never even be seen when the memorial is upright.

It's a monument to perfection, says Shure, who is also a sculptor.

What do you see when you get this close, especially further up in the statue?

>> Just the faces, really, of the infantrymen.

The way the sculptor rendered them with such emotion.

You could see in their faces fear, you could see the determination, you could see the dedication.

>> BOWEN: In July of 1863, under the cover of darkness, the 54th stormed Fort Wagner in South Carolina.

The regiment was defeated, with nearly half of the troops killed or wounded, including Shaw.

But that moment, the regiment's ferocious battle for liberty, would be memorialized-- in remembrances, testimonials, and even in Hollywood, in the 1989 film Glory.

>> Come on!

(gunshots, explosions) >> (screaming) >> BOWEN: Some 20 years after the battle, Saint-Gaudens began work on the memorial.

We first reported on the monument in 2014, when the National Gallery of Art and the Massachusetts Historical Society presented Tell It With Pride, an exhibition that told the stories behind the monument.

For Saint-Gaudens, an internationally known artist, the sculpture was a labor of love, said curator Anne Bentley.

Do we know why he was so obsessive about this?

>> That was just the way he worked.

After the monument was unveiled, he wasn't terribly happy with it.

He continued to tinker for several years.

>> BOWEN: It is a piece rich in detail, featuring 23 men marching off to battle, guns hoisted, packs tugging, and fabric folding.

But they are not the real soldiers.

Long after the war's end, Saint-Gaudens hired some 40 models for inspiration.

The exhibition introduced us to many of the regiment's real men-- well represented in photographs they themselves commissioned, said the society's librarian, Peter Drummey.

>> It's wonderful to see people who were proud of their uniforms and the accoutrements of their ranks as non-commissioned officers, their instruments as musicians.

Often, they paid to have the photograph hand-colored to bring out the, um, gold of their buttons or their belt buckle, or the different colors of parts of their uniform.

>> BOWEN: All so that they could remember their days.

But today, it's posterity and a monument that remember them.

And during this time of racial reckoning, L'Merchie Frazier says their valor can be even more deeply understood.

>> How would they have reacted to their names being, um, engraved in a monument in a permanent way in American history?

So, I think that we have a grand opportunity once this is restored to expand the narrative of American history.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Next, when we last met Boston Lyric Opera, they were performing in a mobile trailer.

>> ♪ L'amour est un oiseau rebelle ♪ ♪ Que nul ne peut apprivoiser ♪ >> BOWEN: That was last fall, when Boston Lyric Opera was taking opera to the people.

Now, with the company still forced to cancel live performances, it and director James Darrah are taking the traditional art form into the cinematic world.

And their Fall of the House of Usher, based on the Edgar Allan Poe tale, could be setting the stage for the future of opera.

Here's a look.

(orchestra playing low, somber theme) (soprano singing wordlessly) James Darrah, thank you so much for being with us, coming to us from L.A. We appreciate it.

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: Well, let me ask you, tell me about what we have just seen in The Fall of the House of Usher, not opera as we typically know it.

Are you... Are you single-handedly trying to evolve the form?

>> Um, yeah, I think it's, it's both a product of the time we find ourselves in and also just, it's, it has been a longstanding dream of mine to kind of combine the study and love of film and film history and what cinema has to offer as a form.

I feel like opera for the most part-- even myself, having worked in it for years-- has largely ignored that as a, as a potential for visual exploration and an exploration of a way to kind of merge everything that I love about opera, in terms of music and production and, you know, like, a composer's work, with a cinematic language.

(orchestra playing lightly pulsing music) It actually lends itself, I felt, to, you know, just kind of push the form a little bit into a realm that I've often felt like it can go.

>> BOWEN: Well, what about the nature of opera and where you can go in film and cinema makes this a good marriage?

>> I just felt like it was a good opportunity to bring in collaborators from the world of film and create something that wasn't just a simulated proscenium opera.

You know, I had no interest in kind of pointing toward what we can't do in the opera world right now, and thought, oh, this is actually an opportunity-- partially motivated out of necessity-- to, you know, to do something that actually can, can push opera into a realm that not only puts it in front of more people, right?

Because you can digitally share the work.

But also just explores kind of what, in terms of making a film and making a piece of cinema, the tools, the techniques, the visual language that that opened up was really interesting, and... >> BOWEN: Well, let me ask you about this, the realm that you push into.

The Fall of the House of Usher, of course, people associate with Poe.

People have never been completely able to understand what this story is about.

Legend has it it started not too far from where I'm sitting, actually, where people say Poe was inspired by this Boston house where two bodies were discovered.

So what do you see in the story versus what you're depicting in the story?

>> I felt like, okay, if we're telling this story today, in 2020 and 2021, it's not enough just to take Edgar Allan Poe's story and throw it on screen.

Like, we have to think about, why are we putting this out into the world as artists, right?

That was my challenge to the whole creative team, was, why are we looking at this right now and what does this hold for us as an exploration of what it means to be American?

And, you know, how do we explore how some of that larger American mythology maybe is not necessarily...

Things haven't quite necessarily changed from when Poe wrote the story to now, even though the mode of operation in the story is quite different, right?

In our modern era, so... >> BOWEN: Well, enter in, enter in this young girl, who is the protagonist-- who is she?

And are we experiencing this through her eyes, her mind?

>> I thought that we could actually tell a story of a young girl who has been watching, like, an old Fall of the House of Usher film.

>> ♪ Whatever in my power ♪ ♪ Whatever I can do ♪ >> Maybe she starts to process anything she's going through that's traumatic, anything that's related to her family, which ties in with the themes of family and Usher, maybe she starts processing it through this fictional narrative that she's received via TV.

>> BOWEN: And we should point out, the girl we meet in this piece is at a detention center.

I mean, she is somebody who, who's moving toward the United States with these, these concepts that you've given us.

But it's also kind of confusing what we're seeing, just as The Fall of the House of Usher is kind of confusing.

You're not quite sure, as you were alluding to, what themes is, are Poe, is Poe addressing here.

So how do we see that filtered through her?

>> Yeah, I mean, she-- so, basically, everything that she's experiencing starts to mirror what is in Poe's original story.

And we use stop-motion animation to tell Edgar Allan Poe's story, and layer that with this hand-drawn animation of this young girl, in Luna, and say, "Okay, she's experiencing things in her own life "that are going to start mirroring what happens in Poe's original story."

She discovers this kind of Gothic, Edgar Allan Poe-esque House of Usher dollhouse, and starts playing with the dolls, and is feverishly mouthing the words of the libretto like she knows the story.

So it was to kind of, you know, Poe was such a genius at conjuring up an emotional feeling, or conjuring up an unsettling feeling.

And I really wanted to make sure that we didn't lose that.

>> BOWEN: Well, this is unconventional in every front, from what we're seeing, what we're experiencing, to the business side.

Tickets are ten dollars-- I mean, I think... And I often say this, it's so unfortunate what opera has become in this country, this notion that you have to go into gilded halls in your tuxedo and arrive by limo to arrive there, and pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for great seats-- ten dollars.

Why is that significant?

>> It's significant for me because I just think opera has to go in the opposite direction.

You know, I love a fun opening night, but I honestly think that opera's... You know, opera has, was always...

I feel like I was always fed as a student this narrative that opera is where all of the arts converge.

Why has it then ignored cinema for so many years?

You actually have the ability to reach more people, create more digital content that can be in front of more people.

And I think opera in the next decades, I think it has to be something that feels more open and less...

I want it to lean less into a sort of elitist, you know, exclusive artform.

>> BOWEN: So is there enough time to turn this ship around, to do exactly, to reach the people in the way that you're talking about?

To change the notions of what opera can and should be?

>> Yeah, I think the ship is already turning.

We have an opportunity to pull in collaborators that have never worked in opera and empower people that are in the field to make work that can reach people and explore cinematic mediums, and explore visual mediums that I think hold a lot of possibility, right?

I mean, I don't think this Usher film is necessarily definitive of the one type of, you know, cinematic opera that I want to make.

But it certainly is pushing, I think, you know, toward the idea of bringing in animation and animators to create a feature-length... (audio drops) I'm encouraged to think, "Okay, what can we do next?

You know, what is the next phase of this?"

>> BOWEN: Well, I look forward to sitting down again with you in ten years to see how, how much it's changed and how much you're responsible for that change.

James Darrah, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Of course.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

It's great to talk.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: From Japan to Russia, we're spanning the globe in Arts This Week.

♪ ♪ >> I am Dracula.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Sunday marks the 90th anniversary of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi.

The horror film was considered a risky release, but it became Universal's top-grossing movie of 1931.

(playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) Need some music to stir your soul?

Hear Boston Baroque's free virtual concert featuring Beethoven's beloved Symphony No.

5 Monday.

Wednesday, see how colorful kimonos have inspired Japanese printmakers for three centuries, in the Worcester Art Museum's exhibition The Kimono in Print.

(playing Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue) Catch pianist Sir András Schiff's virtual performance of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, presented by the Celebrity Series, Friday.

Make a virtual visit to the Museum of Russian Icons Saturday.

You'll find highlights from its Miniature Masterpieces exhibition featuring folk scenes on brightly painted lacquer boxes.

Next, we move to Florida for a gallery look at the Industrial Aesthetic-- artwork that reflects on mechanics and the urban landscape.

♪ ♪ >> New Industry is really inspired by urban architecture, industrial engineering.

We're really looking to a lot of very exciting South Florida artists to utilize these everyday construction materials in new and innovative ways.

>> I was exploring the human figure.

I was trying to simplify it in, in a way where I used three simple lines of different thicknesses to embody the human figure.

My name is Norman Silva and I'm an artist.

This is by far my largest exhibition.

♪ ♪ This piece is called Alone.

These pieces of steel came from my backyard, so I cut them up, added a little bit of a neck in here, and I created a person, a human figure in the simplest way-- three lines, different thicknesses, different textures.

The reason why it's called Alone is coming from that saying "being alone in a crowd."

This particular "person" within the piece, if you notice, it has a little shinier head than the others, so it kind of stands out a little bit.

Even though it is within all of the rest of the people in there, it feels alone.

If you look around, you could start seeing different personalities in the other "people" within the piece.

Like this couple, there's an older lady, I like to say, there's another couple over here gossiping.

So there's a crowd, a scene is happening within this particular little piece.

My current series of sculptures are basically an outlet from my inner architect.

I love the materials that I'm using right now: the wood, the concrete, the steel.

>> There's definitely a tradition from Modernism onwards of being very, very conscientious about the materials that we use in fine art.

So the show really does that in a very beautiful and lyrical way.

I'm Taryn Mööller Nicoll, and I'm the chief curator here at the Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery and Exhibit Hall, Pembroke Pines.

More rugged materials, such as weathered wood, have been placed in beautiful symmetrical formations, such as Norman Silva's.

And then we have everyday materials like concrete being used for bases.

It definitely challenges what people expect to see from a contemporary fine art piece.

♪ ♪ >> I love admiring buildings and I see them as giant sculptures.

I see them as pieces of artwork.

You could look at some of the buildings downtown Miami that are incredible, and you look at them, and they could be, in a smaller sense, could be put as sculptures in a gallery.

>> The most exciting elements of the show is the heavy emphasis on three-dimensional pieces.

This is a very sculpture-centric show, and each of these pieces will likely look very different according to the differing context that they're presented in.

So, in this gallery space in particular, we really emphasize lighting.

So there are many different shadows that are cast.

There are changes in depth as you view the works from differing angles.

It's also a way that the artist releases control.

It can form the work up to a point, but after the work leaves their studio, they're really placing a lot of trust in the curatorial team to showcase their work and tie it to an overarching idea in a very provocative way.

The Frank is about two years old.

We have a year-round open call to artists, and we really do invite every single cultural producer to submit their work here to The Frank.

We want to see what people are making.

So regardless of their level of professionalism, whether they are just starting out or they're seasoned lifelong artists who really have honed their practice, we encourage everyone to submit their portfolio to us and keep us abreast of what it is that they're working on.

♪ ♪ >> The way in which I create either comes from an idea at first that I sketch down, or from something that I pick up and see something in it that inspires me to create something out of it.

>> Walking down the street, we're on a sidewalk, and we see cracks and imperfections in the concrete.

Maybe after seeing an exhibition like this, we have more of an appreciation for these little details in our lives, and we're able to see things slightly differently.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Finally now, we gallop into Elko, Nevada, for a look at the Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum.

As you'll see, its exhibitions document the life and times of the American cowboy.

♪ ♪ >> The Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum is dedicated to preserving the legacy, the arts, the crafts, the craftsmanship of the American cowboy from the early days of settlement here in Northeastern Nevada.

♪ ♪ We want to display and share the stories, the archives, the materials that were used-- the saddles, the bridles, bits and spurs-- and the different aspects of the way a family ranch would've been through the early part of the 1900s.

♪ ♪ >> It really holds true to the legacy of the pioneer spirit of the West, of the people who created the gear that they needed, but at the same time, the artistry that it required.

And living in Nevada, and especially here in rural Nevada, we have a lot of great artists.

We have writers and poets, painters, sculptors, dancers, and this wide-open landscape really inspires that kind of work, and that you can see on display here that represents decades of tradition in rural Nevada.

♪ ♪ >> When visitors come into our museum, which is housed in G.S.

Garcia's historic saddle shop from 1907, they will see a brand wall, which is a project to show the contemporary and the historical use of brands, how cattle owners designated whose cow belonged to what.

♪ ♪ We have saddles that were working saddles.

So some of them show a lot of wear and tear.

They were the pickup truck of their time.

Cowboys spent a lot of time in them, so they spent their money wisely selecting a saddle.

>> It just reminds me of the significance of handing down that kind of quality craft, of the gorgeous leather work here, and the saddles, and just the smell of the leather.

I mean, this is such a rich museum, not only in history, but in texture and in the feeling that you get when you walk in.

♪ ♪ >> Cowboys like their bling.

Bling is nothing new in the, in the cowboy world.

And these pieces have a lot of very intricate engraved markings to them, and they just show the high quality of work that was produced and sought after by cowboys.

An item that was made maybe in 1898 or 1915 is still the same style and craftsmanship that it is in contemporary times of today.

♪ ♪ >> What I love about this Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum in the heart of downtown Elko is, it's really also signaling this renaissance of celebrating the traditions of the community, but at the same time revitalizing these buildings.

We're not in this habit of knocking them down.

That used to be what was happening, and now we're bringing these buildings back to life and we're filling them full of the things that are important to us.

♪ ♪ >> Elko is right in the heart of the golden west.

We still embrace those cultures and traditions, yet we meld into the new ways.

And the Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum is a great way of keeping those old traditions, but presenting them to new audiences and new generations.

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

Next week, a tour of India by way of the Peabody Essex Museum.

And hitting the open road.

Photographer Amani Willett documents how, for people of color, rather than representing freedom, the road is fraught.

>> It quickly became apparent that in order to navigate the roadways in America, it was going to take extra planning, it was going to take creativity, it was going to take courage.

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

Thanks for joining us.

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

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

♪ ♪