Malcolm Gay

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | Malcolm Gay

Berklee College of Music has ousted GRAMMY Award-winning trumpeter Nicholas Payton after a conservative news outlet surfaced social media posts he made in 2020 critical of Jewish people. Payton, who was named chair of Berklee’s brass department last fall, announced on social media that Berklee officials had told him last week that he had “24 hours to resign or be terminated.”Berklee officials confirmed Payton’s ouster but did not provide further details or give a reason for his dismissal.

2 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Malcolm Gay

The Mellon Foundation announced Tuesday that it will provide $15 million in emergency funding to the Federation of State Humanities Councils in an effort to counter federal funding cuts earlier this month that affected state humanities councils across the country. The emergency funding to the membership group comes after the National Endowment for the Humanities eliminated some $65 million in grants to state humanities councils.

2 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Malcolm Gay

There is not much time left to view the masterful and historic bronze figures in the Museum of Fine Arts’ Benin Kingdom Gallery. The museum said this week the gallery will close April 28 after a years-long effort to transfer ownership to their land of origin ended with the sculptures’ donor taking the extraordinary step of asking they be returned to him. Robert Owen Lehman, an award-winning filmmaker and banking heir, had pledged the 30-odd figures to the museum in 2012.

3 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Malcolm Gay

For more than a decade, a collection of masterful works from the West African Kingdom of Benin have held pride of place at the Museum of Fine Arts, presiding over a dedicated gallery just off the museum’s central rotunda.

3 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Malcolm Gay

“While We Watched,” director Vinay Shukla’s film about a television journalist’s battle against misinformation, has been awarded top honors in the inaugural Henry Awards for Public Interest Documentary through the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. The new awards are meant to honor excellent documentary filmmaking that investigates critical social issues of our time.