Arielle Gray

Boston

Arts Reporter at WBUR-FM (Boston, MA)

Bostonian. Queer. Arts Reporter at @WBUR, Boston's @NPR station. Co-founder of bookstore Print Ain't Dead. Bylines: @NPR @Glamour, @Zora, @Bustle.

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Articles

Remembering artist Rob Stull, whose work spanned canvases and comics

2 weeks ago | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

Cydney Garrido barely remembers a time when her brother Rob Stull wasn't creating something. Yes, he was her (sometimes annoying) little brother. But from a young age, Garrido and the family knew he was talented. " Even when he was teeny tiny," she says. "We have a family photograph of him where he had cut pieces of a brown terrycloth bathrobe or towel and stuck pieces to his upper lip and his eyebrows, like one of the Marx brothers or something. He was always doing stuff like that.
Country singer Zach Bryan helps secure Jack Kerouac's legacy in Lowell

3 weeks ago | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

Editor's Note: This story is an excerpt from WBUR's weekly arts and culture newsletter, The ARTery. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here. Amidst the news of arts institutions and organizations losing funding, there was some positive news out of Lowell last week. Grammy-winning country artist Zach Bryan purchased a 20,439-square-foot building that will become the Jack Kerouac Center, a creative hub and performance space.
60 years ago, my grandfather joined Martin Luther King's Boston march

1 month ago | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

My grandfather, Wayne Lucas, is a proud native Bostonian. He grew up predominantly in foster homes in Roxbury and Dorchester and spent a good chunk of his youth in a house on Pasadena Road, right off of Blue Hill Avenue. As a teenager, he was a regular participant in Freedom House's programs for youth — the longtime Roxbury/ Dorchester organization that focuses on community uplift and the development of Black and brown children.
An art-inspired mystery on the Cape

1 month ago | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

CommentaryEditor's Note: This story is an excerpt from WBUR's weekly arts and culture newsletter, The ARTery. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here. It’s not every day that you get to see a “lost” artwork saved from a condemned house. I had this experience last October. Our team received an email from arts specialist Christine Berland at Eldred’s auction house, who was attempting to save a unique Norman Lewis artwork painted on the chimney of a home in South Dennis.
A unique Norman Lewis painting goes up for auction on the Cape

2 months ago | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

A 1960 painting by Norman Lewis is up for sale, months after it was saved from a condemned Cape Cod house. Bidding for the colorful, abstract piece, which was painted on the interior façade of a chimney, starts at $40,000. Christine Berlane is an arts specialist at Eldred's, the auction house that currently houses the painting. She was heavily involved with saving the piece from the home of Marguerite and Hampton Gill, a couple from Harlem who spent summer at their house in South Dennis.
Book clubs across Mass. read Mel King’s 'Chain of Change'

2 months ago | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

Legendary local activist, educator and community leader Mel King wrote his book “Chain of Change” in 1981. It’s both autobiographical and an analysis of the impacts of racist power structures on Black neighborhoods in Boston. King outlines the many local efforts to create pertinent, needed change in the city’s underserved communities.
John Wilson's portraits at the MFA blaze with humanity

Mar 4, 2025 | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

Roxbury artist John Wilson spent his decades-long career creating drawings, paintings and sculptures that explored what it meant to be human. Born in 1922 to Guyanese immigrants, his work was deeply informed by his experience being a Black man in twentieth-century America. More than 100 of his works are the subject of “Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson,” a new exhibition on view through June 22 at the Museum of Fine Arts.
A new home for Black artistry in Boston

Dec 5, 2024 | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

Editor's Note: This story is an excerpt from WBUR's weekly arts and culture newsletter, The ARTery. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here. A new arts facility is coming to Boston in 2027. Castle of Our Skins, an arts institution that celebrates and aims to generate curiosity in Black music, cut the ribbon on Thursday, Dec. 5, at its new location at 566 Columbus Ave. in Lower Roxbury/South End.
The Institute of Contemporary Art announces a new director

Nov 20, 2024 | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

A new director is coming to Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. The museum announced that Nora Burnett Abrams will step into the role in May 2025. Abrams, who has been the director of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art since 2019, will succeed Jill Medvedow, who will leave her position in March 2025. Medvedow leaves big shoes to fill, but Abrams seems well poised to step into them. ICA board co-chair Bridgitt Evans led the yearlong search for the museum’s new director.
Cambridge artist Tomashi Jackson makes a cosmic exploration of society and self

Nov 18, 2024 | wbur.org | Arielle Gray

One of the first pieces immediately visible in “Tomashi Jackson: Across The Universe” at Tufts University Art Galleries is a video collage titled “Self Portrait: Tale of Two Michaels.” It practically glows as it's projected onto a gallery wall, beckoning the eye from the entrance. Overlaid with blocks of orange and blue, two figures (wearing what Jackson calls knitted color studies) move rhythmically to “It Keeps You Runnin’” by the Doobie Brothers.