Art: Charm, Yes; Inspiration, No

In Boston, a survey of America's home-grown impressionists

"American Impressionism," which runs at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art until Aug. 31, is in many ways an excellent summer show: refreshing and nostalgic by turns, more amenable than audacious, and most of it no more problematic than a scoop of lemon sherbet on a hot day. It consists of 133 works. Some, like Mary Cassatt's delicately unsettled, Jamesian glimpse of social manners, A Cup of Tea, 1880, are of memorable quality. But, in general, the level wobbles. The fault is not in the selection:...

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