Heather Cox Richardson’s rise to prominence is an “if you build it, they will come” story. The Boston College history professor (with a specialty in 19th century America) started posting informed political coverage on social media five years ago. Carefully written and loaded with relevant historical context, these dispatches were so well received that she […]
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Not a Straight Line, More of a Curve
“At moments of historical crisis, when the necessity of choice generates fears and neuroses, men are eager to trade the doubts and agonies of moral responsibility for determinist visions, conservative or radical, which give them “the peace of imprisonment, a contented security, a sense of having at last found one’s proper place in the cosmos.” […]
Stories Within Stories: Romeo and Juliet at the American Repertory Theater
“We are building something immense together that, though invisible and immaterial, is a structure, one we reside within—or, rather, many overlapping structures. They’re assembled from ideas, visions and values emerging out of conversations, essays, editorials, arguments, slogans, social-media messages, books, protests, and demonstrations. About race, class, gender, sexuality; about nature, power, climate, the interconnectedness of […]
Slanted Stories
The Winter’s Tale (Photo courtesy of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company) Tell all the truth but tell it slant —Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind — This famous 8 line poem by Emily Dickinson is the […]
Pell Lucy: TRAVEL THE QUESTION
Biano all’acqua, by Silvia De Marchi (Fabriano paper, time, glue, 12 x 10 x 2.”) Pell Lucy’s summer exhibit, Travel the Question, considers the way a work of art comes into form as well as how we as viewers find our way into its mysteries. The show is now on Artsy and can be viewed […]
Finding the Signals
“When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless […]
Pell Lucy: GLANCE GANDER GAZE
The latest online exhibit of the Pell Lucy artist collective is now on view on Artsy.net. Glance Gander Gaze explores the many modalities of seeing and looking. The curatorial statement for the show is included below. Stop in to explore an exceptional selection of work by Pell Lucy artists. You can also review the roster […]
The History of Our Future
The Golden Record consists of 115 analog-encoded photographs, greetings in 55 languages, a 12-minute montage of sounds on Earth and 90 minutes of music. J Marshall – Tribaleye Images / Alamy I am admittedly enamored with the idea that things possess dimensions that can’t be seen. Artists are particularly drawn to this idea, but I was […]
Strangers Meet
At a time when things feel particularly frayed and fragile, finding a place of clarity and comfort is hard. Frequent reference has been made to the haunting the lines of W. B. Yeats’s 1919 poem, Second Coming: “The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” Every […]
How I Learned to Drive
Paula Vogel wrote the play, How I Learned to Drive, by staying up all night for two weeks. She had secured a theater residency in Juneau, but unforeseen circumstances caused her to arrive empty handed. As a result, she was highly aware of an obligation to produce something quickly. The long days of sunlight, the […]