Phillip Martin

January 21, 2025

In late December, Dan McGuire said goodbye to friends and longtime patrons of Whitneys of Harvard Square, and locked the doors for good.

Whitneys was one of the neighborhood’s oldest establishments, a mainstay on busy John F. Kennedy Street since 1953. McGuire was forced to close after losing an eviction battle with his landlord, billionaire Gerald Chan.

A spokesperson for Chan says McGuire owed some $44,000 in past due rent. But McGuire countered that he withheld rent following a dispute over upgrades to the building’s electricity system.He claims Chan wanted him out because his bar doesn’t fit Chan’s “profile.”

Chan owns about 13 properties in Harvard Square, making him second only to Harvard University when it comes to property ownership in the neighborhood, according to the Harvard Square Business Association. His holdings include 40 Bow St., which he restored and was honored in 2017 with a Cambridge Preservation Award . Chan’s properties also include the long-shuttered Harvard Square Theater, the empty Dickson Bros. hardware store and the restaurant once occupied by Upstairs on the Square, no longer open to the public.

Some community members worry the once-vibrant urban center filled with local shops is losing its character. The city has tried to step in to address the issues of vacant properties and intimidation tactics. Business owners and leaders say problems have accelerated with Chan’s real estate investments; his companies have purchased some $170 million in property since 2012, according to the Harvard Square Business Association.

McGuire said the neighborhood has turned into a “billionaire’s playground.”

“It’s almost like he wants this to be his square — and it is becoming his square,” he said.

Chan was not available to comment for this story. But Dan White, a manager for the real estate investment firm he owns, Mayhaw LLC, said changes in the square are simply a matter of dollars and cents.

“That is the nature of the business,’’ White said.“We want the square to be as vibrant as we can, and we do our best to make that happen.”

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January 21, 2025 1:21 PM ET

By Raina Douris, Miguel Perez

Matt Smith, Club Passim’s managing director

George Murphy/WXPN

Cambridge, Mass., is full of grand academic buildings. It’s a place that oozes prestige, grandeur and history.

But nestled in an alley in Harvard Square, down some stairs and so unassuming that you might walk by without even realizing it was there, is a legendary music venue as important as any of Cambridge’s stately halls.

Club Passim has been a sanctuary for folk music for over 60 years. Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan and arguably any major folk musician you can think of have all performed at this intimate venue.

To kick off our Sense of Place: Boston series, we talked with Club Passim’s managing director, Matt Smith, to find out how this modest club became a cornerstone of Boston’s music scene.

Smith and World Cafe host Raina Douris on the stage of Club Passim.

George Murphy/WXPN

Listen • 23:57

Boston Public Radio

Nicole Garcia

January 10, 2025

The 22nd Annual Boston Celtic Music Festival will take place from Jan. 16-19 across various venues in Cambridge and Somerville. The event celebrates the traditions of Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, Quebecois and other Celtic cultures.

A Brian O’Donovan Legacy Artist Grant will be awarded for the first time at this year’s festival.

The grant recognizes an artist who embodies the spirit of community and musical collaboration. Rakish, the inaugural recipient, will be featured during the festival finale, with more artists to be announced, along with a tribute to O’Donovan.

“We wanted to do something that would celebrate his musical legacy,” said Lindsay O’Donovan, reflecting on her late husband’s influence on the Boston Celtic music scene on Boston Public Radio Friday.

One of the festival performers, fiddler Hanneke Cassel, credits Brian O’Donovan for fostering the spirit of live music.

“It’s really hard to even come up with a great description of everything he did for the scene,” said Cassel. “Boston is such a unique place … bringing together the Irish, Cape Breton and Scottish communities.”

The festival has expanded over the past two decades, reflecting the growing appreciation for Celtic traditions in Boston.

“We were doing things mostly in Harvard Square, but being able to expand it into bigger spaces in Davis Square has been a really great thing to bring more people in,” said Matt Smith, managing director at Club Passim. “This is the biggest BCMFest ever.”

“When you’re playing music with people, it kind of surpasses … even if people have different ideas and opinions about how things should be run, music brings that together,” said Cassel.

Artist Isola Murray’s child-size animals

by Olivia Farrar

Septimus, a sculptural character within Tired Clichés, a solo installation by artist Isola Murray | PHOTOGRAPH BY OLIVIA FARRAR/HARVARD MAGAZINE

In the middle of Harvard Square, with pedestrians bustling by, there’s a fish sitting in a bathtub. He’s patient, watching everything unfold from behind a window. His name is Septimus, and he’s a sculptural character within Tired Clichés, a solo installation by Isola Murray, an artist and art educator originally from Western Massachusetts. The exhibition, curated by Yolanda He Yang, runs at 25/8 artspace located at 2 Linden Street, Cambridge through February 4.

25/8 artspace is itself an intervention in the everyday. A slim, hallway-sized gallery nestled in the heart of Harvard Square, it was opened in 2023 through a collaboration between building owner Intercontinental Management, Yang, and Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association (HSBA). The tiny gallery serves as a physical reminder that creativity can thrive even when made narrow.

The space was created almost serendipitously, the result of a Cambridge zoning code requiring a maximum street frontage of 25 linear feet (here, between Mass Ave and Linden Street)—which inadvertently created a “false wall” on the side of Santander Bank. Rather than let the area go to waste, the HSBA worked with Intercontinental Management to transform it into a refuge for art.

The name given to 25/8 reflects two sources of inspiration. First, in curator Yang’s view, it’s a reference to the amount of time museum staff spend in their jobs: somehow, they find and devote an extra hour to each day, and an extra day to each week. Second, it references the original “Gallery 24/7,” a former repurposed Bank of America ATM at Mount Auburn and Holyoke Streets, which was converted into a temporary all-day, all-night artists’ collaborative in 2022. That gallery featured local artists and exhibited work in a mix of styles. From those beginnings, 25/8 artspace emerged as a more permanent, if still snug, home for artistic exploration.

25/8 is also the gallery for the larger project “Behind VA Shadows” (VA stands for Visitor Assistants), a creative collaboration created by Yang after the pandemic. Noticing the level of burnout experienced by museum staff at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), Yang spearheaded an initiative to create art opportunities for museum workers. Murray and Yang originally met working together at the ICA, where they bonded over a shared love for whimsical and inventive art. 25/8 has become the dedicated spot to showcase the art of museum workers, like Murray, through this project.

“There’s a term, called an ‘alternative art space,’” explains Yang. “Meaning, out of institutional control or management—and we all know why we need places like this. Too often, management is more concerned with administrative processes, like paperwork, than artistic vision. So, one thing I keep very clear and firm about the curatorial vision of this space is that I want artists to have the opportunity to experiment.”

Bringing new installations into the petite space always requires a bit of physical and logistical finagling, and Murray’s Tired Clichés is no exception. According to Yang, all new exhibitions are set up by community volunteers, who help to create the view seen from the street. The space rotates art every 4-6 weeks, sponsored by the HSBA.

Inside this portal now, all nine of Murray’s sculptures from Tired Clichés gaze out. They are a whimsical tableau of papier-mâché and mixed-media creatures, set within household scenes. Each are imbued with distinct personalities and clothing. According to Murray, Septimus the fish is a gifted and deeply sensitive chef; Muriel is a “loud and good-natured” ewe; Monique the bee is a connoisseur of “the finer things,” and is accompanied by her partner, Laverne (also a bee); Coriander the owl is a “great listener”; Celeste is a gossip-prone but “formidable” horse; Delia is a bossy songbird who “reads to Coriander at night”; Algernon is a discerning goat; and Florian is a stamp-collecting hound.

“Murray and I are both big fans of Hayao Miyazaki,” Yang said. Miyazaki is the Japanese animater and artist who co-founded Studio Ghibli, the production company behind Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl’s Moving Castle. “So, we’re very inspired by the fantastical world and storytelling—and imagining that objects or animals might magically begin communicating with us at night.”

25/8, and its predecessor 24/7 Gallery, are also part of a larger story about bite-sized art in Harvard Square. Down the street, the Shadowbox at One Brattle Square—curated by artist Kyoko Ono—similarly houses small-scale exhibits from artists affiliated with Gateway Arts, a nonprofit studio for adult artists with disabilities. Last spring, Gateway displayed a show at 25/8 artspace curated by Yang, entitled “fanfare of clouds” (a title drawn from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s “August Bank Holiday,” 1954). In Ono’s words, “These windows give opportunities for artists to connect with the public through their art. They can bring peaceful moments of joy and appreciation. They can brighten small alleys. They might [even] inspire passersby to have a go with their own creative projects. And these windows stay open all the time.” Like “Little Free Libraries,” which have also gained popularity across the country in recent years, these three miniature open art galleries expand the goals of literacy and art beyond the institutional spaces of the library or museum.

As life ebbs and flows outside 2 Linden Street, Tired Clichés invites a moment of pause. As good art does, the installation entices passersby to reflect—in this case through the simplicity of the silly. The effect is twofold. First: What? And then, inevitably: a smile—a welcome bit of warmth on the cold, winter streets of Cambridge.