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An AIDS Quilt Songbook: Sing for Hope
On World AIDS Day in 2012, the New York City-based "artists' peace corps" Sing for Hope marked the twentieth anniversary of the classical music world's first organized response to the AIDS crisis....
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Paula Bronstein and The Big Story
A woman makes her way down the sea wall along the Kitakama and Ainokama coastline in Sendai, Japan. Since the tsunami in 2011, the Japanese government has spent billions of yen on the reconstruction...
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Unbuilt: Vito Acconci (Video)
Vito Acconci is a restless soul. The New Yorker started out as a poet, writer and editor in the late 1960s, before turning to performance and video art. His most notorious work, 'Seedbed', involved...
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The House on Mulberry Street and Clues to Irish Roots
I've located my maternal great-grandparents, John and Margaret Ellen (Cunningham) Haffey in Wayne County, Ohio in the 1880 census. I'm trying to locate their births in Ireland. I have their death...
View ArticleWhat do Ray Rice and Norman Mailer Have in Common?
After being suspended for knocking out his then-fiancé, now wife, Janay Palmer, Ray Rice has been reinstated by the NFL. There will no doubt be a phalanx of demonstrators when the star running back...
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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night or Un Chat Andalou
What is Iranian noir? Like The Blair Witch Project it's shot in black and maybe recalls 60's B movies like Succubus with a little bit of Rebel Without a Cause, thrown in. Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl...
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Christian or Jewish Gospel Figures? The Answer Will Surprise You
Above is the book cover of Gospel Figures in Art by Stefano Zuffi. It contains over three hundred photos of Renaissance paintings, which were inspired by the Gospels, the first four books of the New...
View Article15 Masterpieces That Make Barcelona Feel Like One Big Modern Art Museum
When the modernistas were alive to roam Barcelona, Catalonian prodigies like Dalí and Picasso shared cava and anise at Els Quatre Gats Café, once a hub for artists and intellectuals near Barcelona's...
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Redefining Beauty
The post below contains photographs that some might consider NSFW. When the images of Kim Kardashian's back side "broke the Internet," I was in disbelief. Not because they were shocking, but that her...
View ArticleIs Public Art Just for Show?
As I walk around Rockefeller Plaza in New York in September, a massive shadow towers over me, I look up and think, "What is this floral half-horse, half-cow sculpture?" A crowd of people are taking...
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Seattle Rep Theatre's All the Way: Surprisingly Entertaining and Insightful
A friend invited me to a performance of All the Way at Seattle Repertory Theatre, and I expected an intellectually interesting performance examining the first year of Lyndon Baines Johnson's (LBJ)...
View ArticleThe Penalty Is a Film That Must Be Seen
The U.S. death penalty has received a great deal of attention and scrutiny these days. And the problems are many. This year, six innocent men were released from death row -- some of them spending up...
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Turkey Was Good, But Art Was Even Better
So how was your Turkey? Mine was very good. But still, the inevitable question remains -- what is the best way to fight Post-Turkey Depression? A shot of vodka? No... How about art? Yes. Three shots of...
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Side Show: Stage Directions and Henry Krieger
I saw it first. Well, not quite. The rapturous critical reception that has greeted the revival of Side Show on Broadway takes me back, way back, to a demonstration of Side Show's unique power that I...
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The Washington Ballet Takes On 'America's First Great Ghost Story'
Writer Matt de la Peña spoke with the artistic director of Washington Ballet about the upcoming world premiere of Sleepy Hollow. The following is excerpted from that interview... Septime Webre, photo...
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5 Street Art Styles Meet On A 30-Meter Diptych In Łódź, Poland
Graffitti artists like to talk about styles of their letter-based art form as if they contain individual DNA from the clans that originated the particular aesthetic, era or technique of rendering....
View ArticleWhy I Make the Movies I Make
After the first preview audience screening of Love & Basketball a 17-year-old Black boy said, "The movie taught me how to love." Fourteen years later, after the first preview audience screening of...
View ArticleThe Death of a Poet: Death the Last Chapter
Our existence derives its meaning from use, for this reason a glass bellows when it is used even for mundane activities as opposed to a china set that is reserved for the grandest of balls. Seemingly...
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And the Winner Is...
Reality singing competitions are great opportunities for songwriters. After all, whoever wins is going to need an album's worth of material. But I have conflicting feelings about these shows. To me,...
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You need to see this film about sex work and addiction
Filmed in and around Seattle, The Long Night is a gripping and honest account of addiction, sex work, and the lives of a survivor and her family. Viewers also get to know the police who are trying to...
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