Opinion
Weekend Words: Vacant
"Every time I appoint someone to a vacant position, I make a hundred unhappy and one ungrateful."
Weekend
Books
Reader’s Diary: Jaimy Gordon’s 'Lord of Misrule'
Jaimy Gordon passed through my field of vision some time in the early 1980s.
Art
More than Meets the Eye
If you see lots of work by different artists, you are going to make your own connections.
Books
Susan Bee and Johanna Drucker Tell the Real Life Stories of Fabulous Females
In the tradition of Lives of the Saints and, even more pointedly, Laura (Riding) Jackson’s Lives of Wives, visual artist Susan Bee and book artist Johanna Drucker have created a wonderful new “picture” book, Fabulas Feminae or fables of women.
Music
Justin Bieber, Sex Panther
The consensus was that this former child star’s career was over; no longer in his target demographic’s age range, he found himself unable to push the same buttons as before, and was prepared to fade, slowly but honorably, from the public spotlight.
Art
Firestarter: Otto Piene’s Elemental Art
The victors and the vanquished approached the development of avant-garde art in the aftermath of World War II in markedly different ways.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, Paul Allen's art collection, Robert Caro talks, copyediting Donald Trump, critics of color in February, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Scale
"No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water."
Music
Future's Dark Period
Plenty of rappers are prolific in the mixtape world; in terms of sheer output, this Atlanta trap king puts even the absurdly productive Young Thug to shame.
Art
What Will You Do About Chris Killip’s Challenge?
Chris Killip is a photographer who is deeply concerned with family and community.
Art
The Disappearers
What happens when one’s language is not heard? Or heard, but not recognized? When one’s speech carries within it holes of silences: hesitations, pauses, caesuras, stutters, and apprehensions?
Performance
Splendor Is Never Enough: 'Manon Lescaut' at the Metropolitan Opera
The Met’s new production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, directed by Richard Eyre, takes place in a meticulously, even extravagantly realized World-War-II France, with sidewalk cafes and lots of Nazis.