CultureVulture « Cities

The MoMA’s New Picasso Exhibit

Worth the Price of Admission (and plane ticket)

Paula Farmer Art & Architecture December 11, 2015 New York,

Despite the potential cold and snow that New York can be in the winter, it’s worth going for all to see and do. Not least of which is the current Picasso exhibit at the MoMA- “Picasso ...

China Doll

A David Mamet/Al Pacino event now in previews.

Emily S. Mendel Theater October 31, 2015 New York,

Some think that it is not kosher to review a play while it is still in previews, but, I don't live in New York any longer and my recent visit there was timed to coincide with other events. But how ...

Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette, Okieriete Onaodowan as Hercules Mulligan, Anthony Ramos as John Laurens and Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton.

Hamilton

The hottest ticket on Broadway.

Emily S. Mendel Theater October 31, 2015 New York,

When a Broadway show gets uniformly rave reviews, I worry that the performance can't possibly live up to the hype. Not so with “Hamilton.” What makes “Hamilton” unforgettable, in addition to its creative concept by the mega-talented Lin-Manuel Miranda (“In ...

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Kinan Azmeh

“Songs for Days to Come”

Michael McDonagh Music June 14, 2015 New York,

We like to think that chamber music is an acquired taste but what is chamber music but music played in a room by a few people for a few people or for thousands ? So it's not just the Mexico- ...

An American in Paris

Toba Singer Theater June 14, 2015 New York,

Is sentimental attachment to Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron and George Gershwin, a sufficient guarantor to justify producing the Broadway remake of a 65-year-old film, set in 1945 post-World War II France, with a sub-plot that references the pro-fascist ...

Alex Katz

solo show, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, NYC

Michael McDonagh Art & Architecture May 25, 2015 New York,

We think we know what things are about when we see them. Sure, they are what they are, but how could they not be, and if things were only that we wouldn't need art, and our latest phony "deep" buzz ...

“The Invisible Hand”

That Stockholm Thing

Aaron Botwick Theater January 1, 2015 New York,

Ayad Akhtar, whose excellent "Disgraced" won the Pulitzer last year and transferred to Broadway this year, is quickly becoming one of the most important (if not the most important) new voices in contemporary American theater. His follow-up, "The Invisible Hand," currently running at the ...

“Evidence” and “Mikhailovsky Ballet”—Surprising Similarities

Susan Yung Dance November 22, 2014 New York,

Mikhailovsky Ballet in Flames of Paris. Photo: Costas Ronald Brown's Evidence: A Dance Company, from Brooklyn, and the Mikhailovsky Ballet, from St. Petersburg, Russia, couldn't be more different. Or ...

Retrospective, by Xavier LeRoy

PS1 MoMA, NYC

Michael Wade Simpson Dance November 18, 2014 New York,

French choreographer/artist Xavier LeRoy has staged his “Retrospective” in Singapore, Paris, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro and Hamburg before arriving at PS1 MoMA in Long Island City for a two-month run ...

Panel with striding lion. Mesopotamia, Babylon. Neo-Babylonian period, reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 604–562 B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Michael McDonagh Art & Architecture November 4, 2014 New York,

It's important to remind people that the West is the new kid on the block because our narcissistic Euro centric worldview is always telling us that "we" did everything first, and everyone else is a late arrival. But that, of ...