The Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney, through Dec. 13th at the Public Theater. At 29 years old, playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney has been crowned “a major new voice” by enough critics, directors, dramaturgs, and producers that there is already something of a backlash in...
The mini-marquee exhibit, which runs through the end of November, offers a blueprint of what to expect from the Met as it moves forward with a new model of recession-special installations—small shows anchored in a prominent work or two, and bolstered by a supporting cast drawn from the museum’s expansive permanent collection. The logic of the move is clear: with a contracting endowment and significantly reduced operating budget, the Met’s recently-appointed director Thomas Campbell decided that looking inward and relying on the occasional munificence of partner institutions was the museum’s most promising tactic to cut costs without sacrificing quality. But concerns challenging the utility of this approach persist, making
Vermeer’s Masterpiece the most important trial of Campbell’s young career. Unfortunately, the budget blockbuster falls flat. To be sure, the exhibit betrays hints of limited resources. Including period reproductions of ceramic bowls and tile work, for example, is charming but suggests a quiet desperation to fill space without clear purpose in the absence of relevant content, while the comic book-length catalogue (stapled at the spine) indicates that the Met has abandoned its tradition of producing gorgeously hefty companion pieces to its major exhibits. But this is hardly the problem.
Nelson Lichtenstein, The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. Metropolitan Books, 2009 Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. Harvard University Press, 2009 Many New Yorkers might wonder what use it is to...
Peter Swirski, Ed. I Sing the Body Politic: History as Prophecy in Contemporary American Literature. McGill University Press, 2009 One December day in 1817, John Keats wrote to his brother the following: “I had not a dispute but a disquisition… on various subjects; several things...
Marc Sageman and Charles B. Strozier at an October Center on Terrorism Seminar In the normally-restrained world of academic discourse, the 2007 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association stands out as a break with the dominant culture of self-abrogation and...
