Recognition can be late in coming for many artists, but perhaps especially so for women whose originality and talents too often become overshadowed by their more famous romantic partners. Museums are often eager to put on shows making this very argument as women artists are rediscovered. Sometimes the thesis succeeds; other times, it does not.
On March 16, 1966, Neil Armstrong and David Scott became the first astronauts ever to dock with another spacecraft when they linked their Gemini 8 capsule to the uncrewed Agena target ship. However, the cheers had barely died down at Mission Control Houston when Scott realized they had a problem. The conjoined spacecraft had begun
Tucker Carlson may be the most divisive man in America, a human tuning fork vibrating at frequencies that delight half of the country and drive the other half demented. Few public figures inspire such simultaneous loyalty and loathing. To his admirers, he’s a truth-teller with a preternatural instinct for cultural anxiety. To his critics, he’s
George Saunders’s luminous new novella Vigil begins with a fall of a kind – lower-key, sinless and very funny: “What a lovely home I found myself plummeting toward, acquiring, as I fell, arms, hands, legs, feet, all of which, as usual, became more substantial with each passing second.” With the fallen narrator landing headfirst, ass
Americans who are concerned with heightened levels of political violence should understand that we are fortunate compared with Pakistan, whose most visible political family, the Bhuttos, have a history that makes even that of the Kennedys look tame. One survivor, journalist Fatima Bhutto, born in 1982, encapsulates the family tragedies. Her grandfather, the charismatic prime
Is music getting worse? Rick Beato is a musician, producer and critic with more than five million YouTube subscribers. His answer would be: yes, pretty much. In a recent video, he compares the 2026 Grammy Song of the Year nominees to those of 1984. There are a few bright sparks among the slate of new
In 1966, the actor Raphael Montañez Ortiz staged his one-man show Self-Destruction at London’s Mercury Theatre. Intermittently screaming “Mommy! Daddy!,” Ortiz tore the clothes from his body, doused himself with baby powder, lay down in a diaper, downed a few bottles of milk and began vomiting profusely. Plastic bags were then distributed to members of
Personally, I regard Mount Rushmore as an excrescence on the mountain and a monument to the horror that Edward Abbey called industrial tourism. Beyond that, it is an expression of a naive piety and a patriotic sentimentalism that no longer exists in America. Matthew Davis correctly views the presidential sculptures carved into the face of
Nicolas Sarkozy’s prison memoir is a slender book about a short sentence that nonetheless makes for compulsive reading. It is unintentionally comic, occasionally moving and almost always politically calculating. This, despite the weight of its author’s self-importance, moral evasions and intermittent self-awareness. Sarkozy, 71, was sentenced to five years for criminal conspiracy linked to Libyan
The Night Manager is finally back after ten years with three major drawbacks: no Elizabeth Debicki for the sex scenes; no Tom Hollander for the comedy scenes; and no Hugh Laurie for the evil-kingpin-in-his-toothsome-mountaintop-lair scenes, I nearly claimed. But only because at the very beginning of the new season the Laurie character’s grizzled body is
Woody Allen once sardonically described the fans of his films as being divided between those who liked the “early, funny ones” and the later, darker pictures. Much the same might be said of another famous WA: Wes Anderson, who has established himself as one of American cinema’s most significant auteurs despite no longer living in
“I’m very, very proud of making pots,” says Edmund de Waal. “I don’t call myself a conceptual artist.” He is putting the finishing touches to an exhibition of ceramic sculptures at Gagosian’s Beverly Hills gallery. Around the walls are sleek, tiered vitrines filled with porcelain vessels, along with a sequence of smaller gold-painted boxes –
The scene is the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome in the 2nd century. The philosopher Favorinus is waiting to greet the emperor Hadrian when a grammarian corners him and launches into a lecture on the grammatical qualities of the word penus, meaning “provision.” “Well and good, master, whatever your name is,” Favorinus
The beginning of Crucible, the writer and Oscar-nominated director John Sayles’s eighth novel, opens with a feint. A couple of journalists are taken for a mock-perilous test drive at the presentation of Henry Ford’s latest automobile. On their return, what starts as a humorous Q&A becomes increasingly restrictive as it becomes clear there is to
Airplane hijacking, like the mode of transport itself, became common in the 1960s. A practice largely confined to the United States, it was invariably a means for ordinary criminals to extort ransom money or flee to Cuba. In 1968, the hijacking of an El Al flight by the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of
“WAITING FOR GODOT IS A RUBBISH PLAY.” So declared Keith McNally in an Instagram post that caught my eye. “I urge you not to see Waiting for Godot.” Accompanying the statement was an image of the two stars who headlined this fall’s production at Broadway’s Hudson Theater, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. The play is
Orson Welles (1915-85) considered the notion of posterity vulgar, but he knew that he’d be loved once he was dead. That death came suddenly, just over 40 years ago, on October 10, 1985. There was a poignancy to the way death took him – sitting at his typewriter after appearing on Merv Griffin’s talk show.
This book shouldn’t work. A memoir written by a 60-year-old actress – who, frankly, has never threatened to become a major movie star – hardly sounds promising. Then there’s the author’s personal baggage. Since 2014, Cheryl Hines has been married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the raspy-voiced Health and Human Services Secretary who served as
Which is your favorite Jane Austen novel? OK, maybe not a conversation prompt appropriate for every setting, but a reliable one, I find, to break the ice at DC dinner parties where I’m not well acquainted with my fellow guests but spy someone who seems likely to know her work. I also ask it of
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was so earnest that it landed him in jail. When a former student asked him to use forged identity papers to open a bank account, Rousseau, who was then in his sixties, was happy to help out his old acquaintance. He seemed unaware that he was doing anything more than a favor,