The 51st Newport Folk Festival ended on Sunday with 35 acts over 3 days. When all is said and done, you could argue that this is no longer a festival about folk music, but two of the elder statesman that appeared this year—Richie Havens and Levon Helm (of The Band fame)—served as an inspiring bridge [...]

I have contributed a piece to The Public Humanist, a Mass Humanities blog posted on The Valley Advocate. It is a review of Martha C. Nussbaum’s new book (Not for Profit) , which argues that the arts and humanities are under threat because educational institutions, frightened by economic hard times, are moving toward a more [...]

What is the food that Luis Melendez paints? Is it food? More than food? Less than perfect food? Food stand-ins for something else? What is this stuff called “every species of food produced by the Spanish climate”? Is it about the food or something beyond, beyond the canvas?
by Sally Levitt Steinberg
What fruits! What [...]

Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) by Alexander Zemlinsky. Libretto by George Klaren, based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Birthday of the Infanta.” Staged by OperaHub at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, through March 13. Free
Reviewed by Helen Epstein
For a truly worthwhile evening of music drama—free admission no less—get yourselves to the Boston Center for [...]

By Bill Marx
Veteran “Village Voice” theater critic Michael Feingold has written a good column on the tragic news, for some, that the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, the organizations that jointly manage Broadway’s annual Tony Awards, have decided to remove the first-night theater press from the ranks of Tony voters.
Some hand-wringers charge [...]

By Helen Epstein
The extraordinary Eleanor Norcross: educator, collector, painter and daughter of Fitchburg’s first mayor.
Have you ever been to Fitchburg? It’s off the beaten path and although I’d heard of its state college, and seen the signs — about five miles north of Route 2 — I’d never ventured into the once-properous, now economically depressed [...]

By Peter Walsh
“There’s a gude time coming.”
—Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy (1817)
Americans, always attuned to the prices and classes of commodity, assume that the arts fall into the expensive luxury category: an ornament to good times but destined to wilt, like a hot house orchid, under the cold wind of recession. History suggests otherwise.

Federal [...]

By Bill Marx
Part 1 here
Edmund Wilson’s Marxism, though leavened with a saving skepticism, could also push his evaluation of literature into a blind lockstep. For him, Willa Cather’s novels of the ‘20s, such as The Professor’s House, were not sufficiently aware of the effects of adverse social conditions to be of merit. “Yet in criticism,” [...]

This final ArtsCast features the conclusion of our series examining Boston at the cultural crossroads. Bill Marx speaks with Maureen Dezell who has written for the arts in various publications including the Boston Globe and the Phoenix and you have heard on the podcast interview various cultural movers and shakers about Boston lagging in cultural [...]

By Debra Cash
Young love never completely fades. The sight of a group of elderly ladies sighing over the perfect physique and gentlemanly mannerisms they remember embodied in the young George Zoritch is the centerpiece of Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s sweet new documentary “Ballets Russes,” which is at the Landmark Cinemas in Kendall Square, Cambridge [...]