The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, in posh, suburban, Lincoln, Massachusetts has the unique mandate of primarily collecting and exhibiting art created in the New England area. It is an important, daunting and under-appreciated mission. For artists of the five state Northeastern region it provides crucial exposure and support, but, on a national and international level it is difficult to attract funding for what is viewed as provincial programming. Generally, its often-excellent exhibitions, particularly retrospectives for major artists, don’t travel. That, in turn, makes it very difficult to publish substantial catalogues when there is such a limited distribution.

And, in this very important work, the DeCordova isn’t getting a lot of support from major area museums, primarily the Museum of Fine Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art, which represent very substantial resources. These institutions tend to look down their noses at "local" art. Like the current DeCordova annual series, which started in 1989, the ICA used to have a "Boston Now" show but for a variety of reasons, primarily self-serving and careerist, that was just dropped. And, through a little feminist arm twisting the MFA has its annual, Maud Morgan Award, named for a deceased artist, in which the museum offers a cash prize with which it acquires and then more or less buries a work in its vast permanent collection.

The ICA has a similar award. The lucky artist is paraded out to take a trophy at the annual fundraiser and gets a mini show. The current example of this is an exhibition of work by Laylah Ali. Again, one mini show, (read basement gallery) per year. Big deal. And by selecting just one artist a year there is like, less chance for like, curator, Jessica Morgan and, like, director Jill Medvedow, to, like take a chance and sortah screw up and stuff. No risk-taking here, fer shure. Ali, for example, was an already bankable commodity with national exposure before the ICA got to her.

For local guys, however, no such luck. The MFA is committed to collect only one chick work a year. The assumption is that if work is produced by artists who live in New England, by definition, it can’t be very interesting. There are, of course, exceptions. Annette Lemieux was already famous when she moved to Boston. And, the Cuban born photographer, Abelardo Morrell, who teaches at Mass. College of Art, enjoys an international reputation. Another Cuban born artist, Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, calls Boston home but exhibits internationally.

Examples of home-grown artists who enjoy major national and international reputations are exceedingly rare. Part of the obvious blame for this is the lack of major institutional support. And, more significantly, a lack of synergy or even communication in the arts community. The left hand doesn’t seem to work with the right hand.

This argument, of course, might be made in many arts communities. Perhaps there are universal laws that govern this. That it is up to artists to create their own dialogues and grass roots institutions and by their very energy and activity to coerce the major institutions to join in rather than to be left behind. This seems to have been the case in the formation of the Young British Artists. It was the artists themselves who created their own scene and only then did major players like Charles Saatchi catch the wave and fan the momentum. The lesson is that artists don’t get anywhere by sitting around and feeling sorry for themselves. You have to get off your ass and do something.

Getting into shows like the DeCordova Annual, the Brockton Triennial, or the annual Lois Foster Exhibition of Boston Area Artists, at the Rose Art Museum, or any of the 50 or so alternative spaces and seemingly endless university and school venues, surely helps. But, let’s face it, even that ain’t New York. Or even, let’s get real, Brooklyn. That’s where its groovy baby. The whole enchilada. The Big apple.

So then what is the state of the arts in the provinces. Let us go then you and I to the DeCordova Annual. Where, to be sure, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times.

For openers, just what do we mean by "New England" artist. Clearly, the curators (Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Nick Capasso, George Fifield, and Jennifer Uhrhane) are defining it as "currently living in." Of the ten artists, for example, Ahmed Abdalla was born in Egypt, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, was born in England and raised in India, Kelly Kaczynski is native German, and Janice Redman was born in England. Since each of these artists brings the sensibility of their heritage to their work the resultant exhibition has a distinctly multicultural flavor.

This is particularly evident in the work by Abdalla and Matthew and less so in the work of the other two artists.

Viewing the kitsch, hilarious but alarming, ersatz Indian movie posters, by Matthew, gave me flashbacks to the Century City exhibition and its Bombay component that we saw in March at Tate Modern in London. That work, which played on the Pop imagery of Bollywood was very new to me then and this recent work adds to and further clarifies the importance and meaning of that work. The artist focuses on certain dominating themes as spousal abuse, dowry murders, arranged marriages and the caste system. Her use of reconfigured text is both amusing and painful in its real implications.

If the posters by Matthew pop out at you, by contrast, the large format, abstract paintings of Abdalla are understated and meditative. The colors, although greatly modulated tend to monochromatic fields in which there are invented calligraphic markings.

Evolving from a British family tradition of craftsmanship, Redman embalms and mummifies common kitchen crockery and flatware into little stitched up objects. Artifacts are reconfigured into art works. Those spoons will never again stir tea of scoop up soup.

One common theme in the DeCordova Annual series is to represent distinct categories of contemporary art: Sculpture, installation, photography, painting, craft and graphic arts, as well as art and technology. This is a reflection of the areas of specialty of the four curators who seem to be accorded equal slices of the overall pie.

So, for instance, there is always sculpture. But, after several versions of the annual, there seems to be a sameness to what is shown. That may imply that this is the dominating kind of work that is being done, or that it is the taste and sensibility of the curators.

The works by Richard Klein, involving mosaic like, oddly configured shapes and forms, of discarded eyeglass lenses, casting dazzling reflecting light onto surrounding walls, would, quite frankly, be unique in this or any other year. It is very original and gorgeous work evoking audible oohs and aahs from delighted viewers.

But those large sewn rawhide and wood, freestanding, surreal, sci fi objects by Dean Snyder, and a room of plastic bubbles and stuff dripping from the ceiling in a claustrophobic small room, with a belly up frothing dead deer, by Kaczynski was just samo-samo, déjà vu all over again.

The selection of "this year’s official photographer," Marian Roth, was much more unique and exciting. She does, "pin hole photographs," so, what else is new. But wait a minute. She has turned her van into a portable "Camera" going back to the original use of the word, which is Italian for room. So her van is a portable camera, literally. She drives around to select subject matter. Having found a suitable vista she crawls in the back and tacks up a sheet of color mural, photo paper to, "take a picture." The result is stunning, weird, spooky and surreal with dramatic splashes of discombobulated color. In the presentation of the work they are attached to black steel plates using several magnets. They look real groovy.

This year’s designated, "art techie," is Kelly Heaton, a current fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. During a post Christmas, wholesale, sell off the artist acquired several hundred animated children’s dolls/toys, called The Furby. Then, what to do with them. The artist had several ideas but the centerpiece of her installation is a large white wall, The Pool, in which are embedded four hundred sets of individual eyes and mouths from deconstructed Furbys. The walls contain multiple sensors that respond to the proximity and body movement of viewers. When nobody is present the wall remains static but as one experiences the work a sequence of units are activated in such a manner that they seem to be looking at and responding to us.

An unfathomable amount of time and technology went into programming and assembling this work. And, while we respect the labor and dedication of the artist our response to the experience is somewhat enigmatic. It is unclear just what humanistic insights one is meant to derive other than being dazzled by such sophisticated technology.

There is a very clear dichotomy in the work of the two painters in this exhibition. Brett Bigbee is a representational artist who does nude portraits of women and children. Both pencil studies and oil paintings are included. The acrylic on paper images mounted on panel by Sarah Walker follow her own alchemical formulations of abstracted markings.

Most vernissage visitors commented that they found the inclusion of Bigbee somewhat incongruous in a show that is mostly striving to be cutting edge. Trained at the conservative Pennsylvania Academy in this mix his work looks decidedly retro. But looking further they have a quirky edge. Instead of straight up realism they recall the angst and intensity of German Romanticism, particularly the artist, Phillip Otto Runge’s, The Hulsenbeck Children, or the zany, macabre self portraits and family groups by the expressionist, Otto Dix. Perhaps this disturbing aspect of the work is what the curators saw as its contemporary edge.

As to the paintings of Walker, the markings and their substratum of sources and imagery are beyond my range of experience and comprehension. This is not to pass judgment on the work it is just that I, as an individual, am at a loss to connect to it. In that case, I will just quote the curator, Capasso, on Walker, "Her visual worlds in flux, where space, size, scale, position, and point of view lurch alarmingly, derive from her understanding of how disciplines like computer science, physics, astronomy, mathematics, neuroscience and genetics increasingly model the underlying structures of our identities, our bodies and out universe- on both microscopic and cosmological levels." Deep. Yeah, real deep.

When visiting the DcCordova I always seem to come away with mixed responses. Inevitably, I find myself second-guessing the curators and questioning some of their decisions and visions. For me, they don’t always seem to get it right. There are areas of major dissent and disagreement. But I am so grateful to have this ongoing critical dialogue. It is distressing, however, that this is the only, consistent voice devoted to a sustained overview of contemporary New England art. How I wish that there were other, strong and different voices forming to mount a mighty chorus. Until then I shall remain vox clamentis in extremis.

I expect to get an e-mail on this from Ken Freed, my classmate at Boston Latin School, who always takes the time and trouble to correct my classical quotations. But what I meant was a voice crying in the wilderness. Hey, it’s a jungle out there.