Opinion
A scientist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has strung together nearly 200 PlayStation 3 video game consoles to create a low-cost supercomputer, the perfect thing to simulate two black holes slamming into each other.
Art
When it comes to the artistic community of New York City, especially from the late-1930s to the end of the 20th century, I can think of many writers, photographers, and artists who readily qualify as flâneur, but there is only who matched Charles Baudelaire’s description of the “passionate spectator
Music
Christmas albums are largely dismissed by mainstream rock critics, and with good reason—consisting mainly of the same old songs over and over again, they’re filler product designed to rake in the cash while the corporate titans who created them take a year off to enjoy private cruises and improve th
Art
The exhibitions that rippled through our cultural fabric over the past year, at least those occurring in and around New York, have registered the predictable number of highs and lows, though 2014 did manage to plumb one nadir unlikely to be matched for a good long time.
Opinion
This week, Santa's Chinese elves, 200 journalists in prison, troll hunters, inequality and Uber, top selfie searches, art bros, and more.
Opinion
It only took a half-century, but this week the United States restored diplomatic relations with the island nation 90 miles off its shoreline.
Music
Former Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore’s new album The Best Day begins with eight downward arpeggios, which is pretty funny given his reputation as an obsessive guitar technician.
Art
A drawing/collage that Cy Twombly made on May 27, 1970, includes three disparate objects: a reproduction of his large, multi-panel painting, “Treatise on the Veil” (1968); a sheet of paper whose dimensions echoed the reproduction, with vertical creases made by folding; and another sheet containing h
Books
In a 1946 letter to the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, poet Charles Olson articulated what has become a quietly influential conception of historiography in poetry circles. “There has been, is too much of everything, including knowledge,” he contended, quite presciently, “because it has not been winno
Art
Masters of painting are occupying major venues in New York this winter. Egon Schiele at the Neue Galerie, Matisse cutouts at MoMA. In addition, the rival Picasso exhibitions at Gagosian and Pace are noteworthy, as is Madame Cézanne at the emblazoned, tarnished Met.
Art
The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, the new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, prompted thoughts of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, though I’m not sure how much acceptance there is in the end.
Opinion
This week, JR's eyes in #BlackLivesMatter protest, Republicans and torture, museums and big data, saving Wikipedia, the meaning of graffiti in ancient Rome, and more.