Essays
Nov 15th 2014
After ten years of planning and six years of construction the Harvard Art Museums opens its doors to the public on November 16. The $350 million renovation combines the collections of three distinct museums – the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M.
Nov 13th 2014
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is director of the Clinical Bioethics Department of the US National Institutes of Health, and heads the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been acknowledged as the prime mover and advocate for Obamacare.
Nov 5th 2014
There is always a point, about 250 pages into writing a novel, where I want to set fire to it.
I have done that in the past. Twice. Thankfully, by now I’ve learned that the whole point of writing a first draft is to get it on the page so you can fix it.
Nov 1st 2014
When composer Morton Feldman first heard Atlas Eclipticalis by John Cage he described it as “the most thrilling experience of my life.” The comp
Oct 26th 2014
Why attempt to create art, I ask, to make something “other” when faced with the dilemmas of existence, with, as I’ve said in one of my own short stories, “all the ways that life betrays the living?”
Oct 23rd 2014
Mother-Daughter Book Club fans, rejoice. Heather Vogel Frederick, author of the erudite and beloved series of novels for and about girls who love to read, has reversed her decision to end matters after six volumes and will publish the seventh—and absolute
Oct 21st 2014
Imagine if you had all the time, money, and knowledge of art to fly around the world, visit museums, galleries, and churches in the company of the world’s top art critics, and then describe what makes great works of art—ones with which most people are not familiar—grea
Oct 20th 2014
Bob Dylan likes to use other people's words, and images. Some people object to this.
Oct 17th 2014
Colm Herron, a Facts & Arts columnist, has just published a new book: The Wake (and what Jeremiah Did Next)
This is the introduction to the book on Amazon:
Oct 13th 2014
To the English-speaking world at least, the awarding of the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature to French author Patrick Modiano will probably have come as a surprise. Many won’t even have heard his name.
Oct 10th 2014
A novel written in an invented “shadow tongue” to give the feel of Early Middle English has a place on the shortlist for the Goldsmiths book prize for innovative fiction.
Oct 8th 2014
Holland might seem an unlikely place to go to see the art of a great American artist, but I am here to tell you it is worth the trip.
Oct 2nd 2014
Hippocrates is considered the father of medicine, enemy of superstition, pioneer of rationality and fount of eternal wisdom.
Sep 28th 2014
The Dutch furniture designer Martin Visser was the first collector to recognize the importance of the Cobra movement. Visser knew Karel Appel and his friends when they had just begun their careers, and were living in extreme poverty, with no recognition from the art world.
Sep 25th 2014
LeRoy Neiman’s paintings, posters and famed handlebar mustache made him one of the most recognizable artists of our time.
Sep 18th 2014
Note to my readers: This essay is a follow-up to my rereading of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse that is more personal essay than review and
Sep 13th 2014
The first time I fell in love was in the children’s section of Brooke Park library. I was eleven and she was ten and her name was Josephine and she had so many freckles on her face that she was a haze of delight.
Sep 4th 2014
In 1962, Bob Dylan told an interviewer: "The songs are there. They exist all by themselves, just waiting for someone to write them down.