By Peter Walsh
Luis Meléndez: Master of the Spanish Still Life, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA through May 9.
Locked into a low-status, unprofitable niche, talented Spanish still-life painter Luis Meléndez (1716–1780) made little money and achieved even less fame during his lifetime. He is said to have complained to the king, who never honored him [...]

By Bill Marx
The prospect of holiday cheer on stage is pretty depressing to contemplate after the soporific treacle of Paula Vogel’s PC-crazed “A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration,” which culminates in the unintentionally eye-popping vision of Walt Whitman, dressed as Kris Kringle, visiting a dying Jewish soldier. For those reluctant to take [...]

By Helen Epstein
A friend of mine who used to teach at Harvard says, “the place is filled with pompous people who think they have to be the smartest and most sophisticated in the world — at least in their field,” so it was a delight this afternoon to hear the unpretentious and visibly agitated Turkish [...]

by Peter Walsh
“Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are.”
—Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe (1989)

Harvard University’s Shad Hall: Can a building predict the future?

Twenty years ago, the completion of Shad Hall, on the Harvard Business School campus, created a stir. Even for Harvard, the place was shrouded in deep secrecy. Access to the building, [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
To mark the dedication of the New College Theatre at Harvard on October 17, a panel of four playwrights gathered to address the question “Does Playwriting Have a Future?” To allay suspense, the answer is yes (whew, that’s a relief).
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One of the most controversial exhibitions in decades, Pollock Matters, curated by Case Western Reserve Professor Ellen Landau and others, opened quietly at Boston College’s McMullen Museum just this past Labor Day weekend. But it is already turning heads.
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A front-page story in the Boston Globe arts section last Sunday reminds us that the Pollock-Matter Affair is alive and well and moving to Boston. One of the biggest art world controversies in decades, this perfect storm of paint, press hype, and cultivated invective swirls around a group of Jackson Pollock-like art works that [...]