Category Archives: Culture

I’ve long been a cheerleader for the WTC redevelopment. Even when others started griping, I was still optimistic about the prospects for the site and the likelihood that it could become a vibrant and world-beating neighborhood. In recent days, however, … Continue reading →

I wasn’t the only person to get up early in order to go to a "professional forum" at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village on the subject of the World Trade Center site. The auditorium was packed, mostly with … Continue reading →

I’ve long had an interest in what was going on at 90-96 Clinton Street, between Rivington and Delancey. For a long time it was one of the neighbourhood’s better 99-cent stores, before a long demolition job started which carefully left … Continue reading →

We can officially assume now, I think, that Daniel Libeskind and the Freedom Tower are barely connected any more, let alone in any kind of one-designed-the-other relationship. My guess is that when all is said and done, the name and … Continue reading →

Is there such a thing as timeless beauty? I’m a fan of built-in obsolescence in art, but at the same time many great artistic creations can and have retained all their power and beauty for centuries. Look at Piero della … Continue reading →

First Simon Rattle, and now James Levine: it’s been a bad week for hugely-admired conductors being sniped at in the press, all the more so for me personally, since these are both at the very top of my list of … Continue reading →

After spending two and a half weeks wandering around Japan, I am, naturally, an acknowledged expert on all things Japanese. Not. All the same, working the "fresh pair of eyes" principle to its bones, I’ve decided to list here some … Continue reading →

It’s Art Week in New York – a bit like Fashion Week, only bitchier. The Whitney Biennial‘s just opened, the Armory Show is upon us, and -scope is setting up shop on 9th Avenue. The upshot is that there’s more … Continue reading →

Those of us who subscribe to the brand-new Slate RSS feed got an update this evening: a new story had been added to the website. Now Slate doesn’t actually put the content of its stories into its RSS feed, but … Continue reading →

Arts bloggers love to get all techno-utopian about the way in which advances in technology, especially the internet, are wonderful for the arts. I’m far from convinced: I think technology can cut both ways. Take recorded music, for example. The … Continue reading →

It’s been two months since David Childs unveiled the Freedom Tower in a blaze of publicity. Since then, of course, most of the WTC attention has been focussed on the memorial, with a little left over for Santiago Calatrava’s magnificent … Continue reading →

Tyler Green is, I daresay, the best art blogger in the world. But today he harshes, quite unjustifiably, I think, on Malcom Rogers, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Rogers’ crime, in Green’s eyes, is to … Continue reading →

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog writing about a big new Manhattan development. It features a landmark office building designed by David Childs, and is meant to be one of the most important new shopping and dining … Continue reading →

One of the more intelligent comments about the World Trade Center memorial competition – I can’t seem to find who said it, right now – was that with some 5,200 entrants, the winning design would not be one individual’s uncompromising … Continue reading →

Wednesday’s Guardian led, reasonably enough, with the suicide of Harold Shipman. The headline, though, splashed across the front page, was peculiar: "The final betrayal". Here’s how the story started: Just after 6am yesterday, Harold Shipman, described as a man addicted … Continue reading →

The New York Post has a great scoop today about the new Santiago Calatrava PATH station at Ground Zero. Unfortunately, the Post spins the story as being about Libeskind’s Wedge of Light: the headline is "PATH Plan May Dim Libeskind’s … Continue reading →

There’s a lot of garbage written about Apple, but the cover story of the latest issue of Fast Company seems pretty fair, if unoriginal. (Innovation on its own doesn’t make money: who’d’a thunk?) The bit which piqued my interest was … Continue reading →

The design for the Freedom Tower – the big signature building which is to rise at the northwest corner of the World Trade Center site – was unveiled with great pomp today. Grand speeches were given by George Pataki, Michael … Continue reading →

Anthony Tommasini is on holiday; in his place yesterday (the "critic’s notebook" feature on the front page of the New York Times arts section), the Metropolitan Opera ran a 2,000-word fundraising drive under his byline. Or maybe he wrote it … Continue reading →

Firstly, many apologies for not updating this blog in a little while. I would use the excuse that I was in Uruguay for most of the time, but that would be disingenuous, since I had (a) laptop; (b) internet connection … Continue reading →

When I posted an entry on 2 Columbus Circle last month, I said that "The lack of windows gives it the feel of a prison: you imagine yourself stuck inside, unable to look out. It is an exercise in claustrophobia, … Continue reading →

It’s the battle of the ArtsJournal bloggers! Taking a perfectly good Boston Globe editorial as their jumping-off point, Terry Teachout and Greg Sandow came to different conclusions about what National Public Radio (NPR) can and should do with its $200 … Continue reading →

If you’ve picked up a reasonably highbrow magazine recently, chances are that you’ve seen a feature on Diane Arbus. She’s all over the news because a major retrospective, Diane Arbus Revelations, opened at SFMOMA on October 25. It would be … Continue reading →

Terry Teachout chimed in yesterday on one of those low-level debates which never seems to get resolved one way or the other: whether it’s a good or a bad thing to applaud an orchestra between the movements of a concerto … Continue reading →