Reception & Lobby

To the right is a photograph by Francis Olschafskie. Francis is a long time Boston-based photographer- he is also an educator who taught at MassArt. He exhibits in New York and Europe and Massachusetts. This is a photograph of a woman that is surrounded by flowers. It is the beginning of a set of three portraits that guides you through the main lobby into the Library space in the Newbury’s collection. ‘Anna’ is a very stylish and chic moment where a woman seems to be surrounded, indeed almost subsumed by the irresistible beauty of a set of flowers in an improbable composition. The photograph was taken in Paris, France and is of the photographer’s wife, Anna. Francis' photographs employ large plate glass windows and the reflections that occur in late afternoon, preferably in cities where the streets are narrow and dark and the reflections are high. He seeks out a site, finds something that is intriguing to him and then spends several hours photographing the reflections until he gets just the view that he wants.

As you go further into the lobby and approach the front desk you’ll see a stunning painting that was commissioned for the hotel by artist Elise Ansel called Dejeuner. Dejeuner considers Edward Manet’s original painting of the same name from the 1800s as a source and as a reconsideration for this painting that is made with broad gestural emotional marks. The Newbury’s Dejeuner faces the Public Garden, just as the subjects sit and have lunch in a beautiful park. Significantly, Manet’s Dejeuner was rejected by the salon (the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris) when first painted because of its radically new point of view of how female subjects were portrayed in general in painting. Manet painted his original female subjects more frankly and with an updated view of femininity at the time. With Dejeuner, The Newbury made a decision to present a painting whose inspiration captured a moment of significant change in the way women were considered in art and history.

Adrian Fernandez is a photographer and sculptor who lives and works in Cuba and regularly teaches in the US. He exhibits his artwork throughout the United States, South America and Europe and maintains a vigorous studio in Havana. Two photographs from The Threshold of Uncertainty series are part of the collection at The Newbury. Finding this work for the collection began with our desire to acknowledge the creativity and style of Newbury Street, long known as the main artery in Boston for fine arts, fashion, style, and luxury. Adrian’s relationship to beauty and his reverence to it combined with his confidence behind the camera make his photographs both iconic and very approachable. As we researched Adrian’s work we found ourselves compelled by this particular series which reaches further back to the history of symbols, icons and devotion. His examination of cultural symbols and icons is a journey to find the meaning behind these symbols and icons, including ways that they have changed dramatically. But the wonderful thing about that in the pictures is it’s done with such strength and such skill and such softness. That’s really what makes the pictures unique.