Arts + Culture

Lawrence Weschler|Essays

Koppel to Cooper: Cool, Cooler, Cold

McSweeney's, Number 5, 2000; and Vanity Fair, June 2006. Back in the summer of 2000, when they were getting set to launch their fifth issue, the gentle hapless crew over at McSweeney's figured that maybe the problem was that they just …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

"Oui, Oui, Oui" All The Way Home

Drawings by Fiona Drenttel. Our children delight in the retelling of the story of my apprehension when, as a child, I embarked on my first airplane trip. Marking the ceremonious start of our family's four-year stay in Paris, it heralded a …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Annals of Academia: The New Exoticism

It's May — the month of hay fever, television sweeps and final reviews. Of the first two, I can say only this: as a veteran allergy sufferer, I watched the swan-song episode of The West Wing in an antihistamine-induced haze, and it …

Julie Lasky|Essays

The Photography of Mark Robbins

Mark Robbins exhibition at Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art, 2003Mark Robbins' Households is a collection of portraits in which the sitters are sometimes sitting rooms (or kitchens or bedrooms), and the people are polished, draped, and …

Alissa Walker|Essays

Why Scientology is Good for Hollywood

If you live where I do, in the actual city of Hollywood, just a few blocks away from where the Oscars are held, you see the Church of Scientology as somewhat of a savior. Within a two-mile corridor along Hollywood Boulevard, the Church …

Michael Bierut|Essays

I Am a Plagiarist

Plagiarism is a hot topic in the world of publishing, What does it mean in the world of design? Michael Bierut pleads guilty.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Disaster Relief 101: No Door Hanger Left Behind

Door hangers seem the perfect metaphor for FEMA’s failure: they’re one-dimensional, unnecessarily complicated, and basically useless.

Willis Regier|Essays

In Remembrance of Richard Eckersley

Design by Richard Eckersley. (Detail from copyright page of Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech, 1989)Richard Eckersley died on April 16, having given the best years of his life to establishing …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Art of Thinking Through Making

I am at heart an irrepressible classicist who likes my type justified and prefers Merchant Ivory to Miramax. I'm an incorrigible Anglophile, a devoted Francophile and I am utterly convinced that my DNA is heavily weighted toward the first …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Propensity for Density

T-Shirt Detail, 2006. Designer unknown.On a recent trip to Los Angeles, we stayed with a friend whose remarkable art collection included work by Robert Mapplethorpe, Joel-Peter Witkin and the painter Squeak Carnwath, prompting more than a …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

A Sequence in Time

Euripedes, the Greek playwright, once observed that time would explain it all. It was a poetic suggestion, yet to date, remains somewhat inconclusive. True, the passage of time might be said to characterize everything from the Mexican …

William Drenttel|Essays

Meet Me in St. Louis: The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts

Exterior view, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Photograph by Robert Pettus, 2004.Nine months ago I went to St. Louis and had a memorable art experience. In and of itself, such an event should not seem so special. This is, after all, …