Monthly Archives: August 2009
Wagner in Seattle
I’ve just arrived in sunny (yes sunny!) Seattle, where I’ll be speaking at the Seattle Opera’s Wagner Symposium. The title of the talk is “Mark Twain: A Perfectly Average Wagnerite,” taking Twain’s report on his visit to Bayreuth in 1891 … Continue reading
Get thee to the Folger…
There’s only a week or so left on the Folger Shakespeare Library’s exhibition, “The Curatorial Eye,” which is billed as “discoveries from the Folger vault.” But it’s worth making an effort to get there. It’s a potpourri show, with various curators … Continue reading
Where does the hate come from?
Sorry folks, if you’re visiting to find out more about the Obama as Joker poster, this is the right website but the wrong post. This post is for the opera crowd, who are busy bees on the internet bulletin board … Continue reading
At the beach…
But before leaving, I finished a quick little look at the Town Hall meeting phenomenon, from a historical and semantic point of view. Research for the piece took me to the Library of Congress, where I spent some time with … Continue reading
Filed under Culture
Don’t miss…
On Sunday at 4:30 p.m., the best selection of the National Gallery’s Carl Theodor Dreyer festival is screened. I wrote about the series a few weeks ago. This is a reminder: For anyone who has equivocated about attending, Sunday is the day … Continue reading
Filed under film
On MSNBC
My article on the Obama as Joker posters led to a huge deluge of email, and a short appearance on MSNBC on Thursday. Here’s a clip. The same clip was posted on YouTube by another entity, the FIN, which has … Continue reading
On race, racism and the racial
I think we need to distinguish between those three ideas if we’re to have a meaningful conversation about race. I can tell from the Blackberry (furiously ringing with email alerts) and the statistics page of this blog there are some new … Continue reading
In case of fire, pull art
Washington is a tough city for art. We are stewards of some of the finest art ever produced. And we are also a smallish city living in the shadow of the country’s cultural capital, New York. How does a … Continue reading
Filed under Art, Culture, Feuilleton, Uncategorized
Not just another brick in the wall
I visited Colombia a few months ago and was intrigued by a building I encountered in the Candelaria neighborhood. The architect was Rogelio Salmona, the country’s premiere architect, and it was one of his last works. And not one of … Continue reading
Filed under Architecture
