Bradford East Condominium (Units 1, 2, and 3) | Berta Walker Gallery
208 Bradford Street in 2015, by Stephen Borkowski.
[2014, Dunlap]
[2010, Dunlap]
Berta Walker with the artist Bert Yarborough. [2022, Dunlap]
Text last updated in 2015 | At the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, built by Freeman Forbes “Bob” Dodge and run by him from the 1950s to the ’70s, one could find unusual pottery, driftwood lamps, and Blenko glass.
As the Berta Walker Gallery, it is among the leading artistic showcases in town. Walker was the founding director of the Graham Modern Gallery in New York; daughter of Hudson and Ione (Gaul) Walker, early leaders of the Fine Arts Work Center; granddaughter of the writer Harriet Avery and the musician Harvey Gaul; and great-granddaughter of Thomas Walker, benefactor of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Her gallery, specializing in important local artists, opened in 1990 at 222 Commercial before moving here. The artist Sky Power is the director. [Update: Grace Hopkins is the director.]
Among those currently represented by Walker are Donald Beal; Varujan Boghosian; Romolo Del Deo and his father, Salvatore Del Deo; Elspeth Halvorsen; Robert Henry and his wife, Selena Trieff; Brenda Horowitz; Penelope Jencks; John “Jack” Kearney; Anne MacAdam; Erna Partoll; Blair Resika and her husband, Paul Resika; Bert Yarborough; and Peter Watts; as well as the estates of Hans Hofmann, Herman Maril, and Nancy Whorf. This is a live-in shop, part of a condominium complex developed in the 1980s by Kent E. Coutinho (a/k/a Kent K. Edwards).
Tom Strange wrote on 14 June 2022: Freeman Dodge sold the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the 208 property to me in 1970. I ran it with my partner Stephen Bowdoin until 1978. We also had a Sorcerer’s Apprentice on Newbury Street in Boston and one in Acton.
¶ Republished on 3 October 2023.
208 Bradford Street on the Town Map, showing property lines.