Arts + Culture

Mark Lamster|Essays

Look Both Ways: On the Streets of Philadelphia

Last week I found myself with a couple of hours to kill in Philadelphia and decided to spend them at the art museum.

Mark Lamster|Essays

UnMonumental

While it's true that the events of 9/11 have begotten a good number of ill-conceived memorials, the latest, set for unveiling today at the Yankees' spring training home in Tampa, might just be the least successful, artistically.

Steven Heller|Essays

Japanese Face Masks

In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, you may recall seeing scores of surgical face-mask-wearing passersby navigating their ways through the dense futuristic metropolis that is a cross between Tokyo and LA. It always struck me as odd — yet …

Franz Wright|Poetry

"Visiting the Library in a Strange City"

The words reappear, slowly developing on a vast unknown but precise number of pages  as I enter: the great building empty of visitors except for me, reading the minds of the dead —  moving with …

Mark Lamster|Essays

Access Denied

In putting together the images for Master of Shadows, my publisher placed a permissions request to use a painting from the collection of the Norton Simon Foundation, in Los Angeles, only to be denied.

Kenneth FitzGerald|Essays

I Believe in Design

The Chesapeake Van, March 2009, photo by Kenneth FitzGerald In each of the communities I’ve lived I’ve encountered one of these trucks. It’s always a white van, hand-inscribed by paint or permanent marker with a variety of …

Mark Lamster|Essays

Splendor on the Grass

What makes a great tennis match great? I started asking myself this question while I was putting together a review of A Terrible Splendor, a new book hooked on a 1937 Davis Cup.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

My Facebook, My Self

But as projections of ourselves, one’s Facebook identity, made visible through one’s photo albums, inhabits a public trajectory that goes way beyond who and what we are.

Mark Lamster|Essays

The Best of NY: Yours Truly

What I've always known is now established fact, as certified by the weekly record of this great city.

Mark Lamster|Essays

After Peter Paul Rubens (Long After)

Perusing the Christie's website a few days ago, I noticed a print attributed to William Pether "after Peter Paul Rubens."

Mark Lamster|Essays

Michael Jackson, Automotive Designer

I know, Michael Jackson has done some terrible things. Tax evasion. Absconding with the Beatles catalog. Child molestation. We Are the World. But this — is design even the word for it?

Mark Lamster|Essays

Roid Rage

The baseball world is up-in-arms over the revelations that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroid use a few years ago. My suggestion: move along, folks.