December 2015 Newsletter Dear Friend of The West End Museum, We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving in the West End or wherever else you may have celebrated. Now Christmas is nearly here, and we hope that you are enjoying the holiday season as much as we are. Speaking of the holidays, in this newsletter,…
West End Museum Hosts 8 Nights, 8 Windows Art Installation & Talk: Jewish Public Art Project will Illuminate Boston Throughout Hanukkah Boston, MA — The West End Museum is proud to be part of Boston’s first seasonal Jewish public art project. 8 Nights, 8 Windows is a juried art venture created to brighten the holiday…
Apologies have their place, but collective action is betterDorchester Reporter Apology is defined as “a regretful acknowledgment of an offense or failure.” In mid-September, in an appearance at the West End Museum, Brian Golden, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) apologized to those who were driven out of the city’s ethnically diverse West End…
West End Residents Walk Out Of Garden Garage Development MeetingNorth End Waterfront West End neighbors went ballistic this week after the Garden Garage project, previously denied by city officials, came back for further review with only two fewer stories (from 46 to 44; 465 feet to 447) and few other changes from the original proposal. Since 2011, Equity…
As BRA Seeks To Extend Urban Renewal Powers, Exhibit Looks At Controversial Pastwbur As Boston’s building boom continues, its development agency wants to extend its urban renewal powers through the next decade. The Boston Redevelopment Authority says the program “allows the BRA certain tools to catalyze development.” But the BRA has a controversial history with urban renewal. In the 1950s and ’60s, 41 acres…
Events Of The Week: Fall Festival, Elephant Brunch, Rachel Revere Meeting And More!North End Waterfront 4:00pm Idelebile Italia Photography Exhibit at West End Museum [150 Staniford St, Boston] Members Gallery Exhibit: Indelebile Italia is free through November 28th and is open during regular Museum hours. There will be a free reception with light refreshments showcasing the photography…
Urban Renewal? BRA Debate Goes RetroBoston Globe If Brian Golden and Corey Zehngebot were selling the exact same policy under any name but “urban renewal,” they’d make more headway among Boston’s wary grass-roots activists, who remember what that phrase used to mean. Golden is director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the muscular agency that’s been reshaping the…
BRA Apologizes for West End Urban RenewalBeacon Hill Times During the opening reception of an exhibit exploring the impact of urban renewal on the West End in the 1950s and ‘60s, the director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority issued the first formal apology on behalf of the city agency for its role in demolishing vast…
New Boston Exhibition Tackles Urban RenewalNext City In what it admits is an “unlikely partnership,” the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the West End Museum have collaborated on an urban renewal exhibition, which opened at the museum last week. The BRA, of course, is the agency behind the controversial demolition of Boston’s West End neighborhood in the 1950s, and…
BRA On the West End Demolition in the 1950s: Our BadCurbed Boston In the late 1950s, the Boston Redevelopment Authority oversaw the wholesales demolition of several acres of the West End and the displacement of thousands of residents, many of them long-timers. It was all in the name of urban renewal, a mid-20th-century effort that turned…