Arts
Eviction Noticed
Bruce Falconer
Gentrification in Berlin shutters a bombed-out building where artists had squatted since the Wall came down
All Scotland Waits for Her
N. S. Thompson
An inspired British documentary featured an unforgettable locomotive, and the work of two of the 20th century’s greatest artists
The Tower and the Glory
N. S. Thompson
The venues built for the London Olympics may be controversial, but do they make an artistic statement? And what will their legacy be?
Reversal of Fortune
James Trilling
Sorting out contradictions in the work of Louis Sullivan, father of the skyscraper and innovator of beautiful ornament
Shakespeare in Bloom
Wendy Smith
A Speck of Showmanship
Ernest B. Furgurson
Is that Pulix irritans pulling that carriage, or is someone just pulling our leg?
Rock of Ages
Wendy Smith
Forty years after their deaths, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin now seem part of the mainstream culture they rebelled against
Offbeat at the Apollo
Wendy Smith
Elvis Costello’s cable TV show, Spectacle, ranges across musical genres and centuries
The Meaning Behind the Lines
Wendy Smith
How Ibsen's toughness and Chekhov's tenderness transformed American playwriting and acting
The Potency of Breathless
Paula Marantz Cohen
At 50, Godard’s film still asks how something this bad can be so good
Cauldron Bubble
Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
Macbeth minus its supernatural elements could not have mattered so much to Lincoln and Dr. Johnson—and should not matter to us
From Oppressed to Oppressors
Wendy Smith
The Battle of Algiers took a pitiless look at the war for Algerian independence, but the filmmakers could not foresee the failures that would result
Grand Horse Opera
Richard Locke
The best Westerns celebrate our history and criticize the ugly stereotypes of the genre
Syncopated Clock, Indeed
Janet Frank
On Leroy Anderson’s centennial, a defense of the popular composer from an orchestra’s stage
Polymer Persons
Priscilla Long
How can we gaze upon the skinned, displayed bodies of the dead and not be revolted and mesmerized?
What the Mind’s Eye Sees
Jason Edward Kaufman
Action painters were postwar exemplars of American individualism
On the Road to Nowhere
John Patrick Diggins
Tom Stoppard’s Russian intellectuals take a wrong turn with Hegel, just as Edmund Wilson once did with Marx
The Quiet Sideman
Colin Fleming
Tenor saxist ‘Chu’ Berry emerged from the pack at the end of his short life
The Short Reign of Fred Allen
Dennis Drabelle
Jack Benny's comic rival starred in a program refiguring "Weekend Update" and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
What Happened to the Social Agenda?
Nathan Glazer
Leading modernist architects once wanted to improve the lives of everyday people; now they hope to astonish and amuse their elite clients
Globalization and Its Discontents
Richard Locke
The directors of movies Babel and Caché tell complex stories of families caught in ever-expanding worlds
When Maestros Were Maestros
Janet Frank
Innovator, mentor, tyrant, Leopold Stokowski brought real joy to music making
Uncommon Sense
Paul Goldberger
Remembering Jane Jacobs, who wrote the 20th century's most influential book about cities
The Man Who Got His Way
Wendy Smith
John Hammond, scion of white privilege, helped integrate popular music
Lenny's Little Chats
Sudip Bose
Envy the children who learned music from the maestro, Leonard Bernstein
The Salome Factor
William Deresiewicz
How the sexualization of concert dance helped end a golden age.
In Praise of Flubs
Sudip Bose
The pursuit of perfection has taken all the personality out of recorded classical music
