A chamber ensemble, comprised of members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, performed a Brahms Trio and accompanied premiere singers in Schubert Lieder and a Donizetti duet. The intimate Weill Concert Hall, seating around 250 people, gave the audience a taste of the individual talents that come together in the grand opera house and rarely get a chance to display their solo skills. James Levine cooked up this idea, and it makes for an exciting and inviting evening.

The Mount and Western Massachusetts’ Straw Dog Writers Guild announce the nine writers selected for the 2026 Residency for Emerging Writers.

During a remarkable career one of the greatest accomplishments of Tina Packer was her epic series the five part Women of Will. She started writing the extracted texts while a fellow at The Bunting Institute. After she retired as artistic director of Shakespeare & Company she was able to focus on the project. She performed with male partners from the Company at various stages of development. I saw the series performed with Nigel Gore.

Tina co-founded Shakespeare & Company in 1978 along with a cadre of theater artists, served as its Artistic Director until 2009, and continued to direct, teach, and advocate for the Company until her passing. Her indelible creativity will be carried forward by countless artists, students, colleagues, admirers, and friends, and her influence on the world of Shakespeare will be enduring.

I exposed the photo-canvas to my image and then instead of developing it in the bath I laid out the canvas on the floor, dipped a fat brush in the developer and painted abstractly on the canvas, thick strokes, thin ones, drips here and there and so on. And as I expected here’s what happened. Only in the areas where I had applied the developer with my brush did the image or part of the image appear. On other canvases I applied the developer on the exposed canvas with my hands and in some cases with my body.

I-ism is the religion of the self, the worship of the ego. It is a faith where the “I” is the central deity, the mind is the high priest, and our desires and fears are the liturgy we recite daily. Unlike other religions that require a conversion, we are initiated into I-ism the moment we first say the word “mine.”

One Battle After Another comes out of the starting gate in first place, a position it deserves to keep. It has just won the Critics’ Choice Best Picture Award, along with Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

On December 5, 2025, world-acclaimed architect Frank Gehry died at the age of 96. Not since his even more celebrated predecessor, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, passed away in 1959 has so much praise, adulation, and press attention been given to a star American architect.

Life in our Paris may have been uncomfortable with few indoor toilets and fewer phones, but life was more relaxed than today, communication was slower, and the police seemed more tolerant. Maybe that was because the May riots of 1968 were still fresh in the collective memory of Paris.

Marty Supreme starring Timothee Chalamet goes into wide release on Christmas Day.  It is the Safdie Brothers  “Uncut Gems"  redux.  Shot by the fabulous Darius Khondji  in zoom close up, with the camera moving with the figures and placing us right beside characters we may not want to know so well, we are gripped for two and a half hours.

I didn't come into this world; I came out of it, like a leaf emerges from a tree.

The equity national touring production of "Les Miserables" has returned yet again to South Florida. The musical, especially the number "Bring Him Home" feels especially relevant at the end of 2025. This production doesn't present the 'Les Miserables' that previous generations experienced.

My grandmother died and left me a thousand dollars; and I bought the second-hand VW. It was a change in my life. A big change. No more carte orange, remember? And parking was no problem in those days in Paris. Nobody ever paid their parking tickets.

During the next five year cycle when conceiving and funding ambitious exhibitions, administrators, foundations and trustees will keep a watchful eye on potential offenses against the government’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion.

A recovering art critic once asked after reading the 1619 Project, “Why don’t you hate all white people?” I asked, “What is a white person anyway?” We realized our identities are far more complex than the containers imposed on us. Whiteness is a burden, built on supremacy, nationalism, colonialism, slavery, and global violence.

Gailus as Hedda gives a performance that emphasizes her manipulative nature so much so that a friend of mine asked if she was a sociopath. The performance doesn’t reveal enough of her depression, despair, and sense of being trapped.

The highlight is the dancing. An early number, “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing,” sets up the expectations with a ballroom number by Phil and Judy. Act two opens with a perhaps over long but spectacular tap number, “I Love a Piano.” It stopped the show.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has announced that a suite of new galleries dedicated to modern art will open to the public on December 13. Four new spaces will be unveiled on the first floor of the Museum’s Evans Wing, each showcasing works from the 20th century that include highlights from the MFA’s collection, new acquisitions, and rarely seen loans from private holdings.

As a young man, he had volunteered as a kamikaze pilot. It was a great honor for his family, he said. The day he was supposed to fly his suicide mission, the war ended, and he was grounded. It was terrible, Namio told us, so shameful for him and his family.

The Clark Art Institute announces its exhibition schedule through 2026. The lineup includes the first public presentation of the Aso O. Tavitian Collection with an exhibition featuring selected highlights from the 331 works of art that were given to the Clark in 2024.

Must see theatre at Playhouse on Park in West Hartford.

The Ft. Lauderdale area's New City Players will present its holiday show at a different location this year. 'It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play' by Joe Landry will take place at General Provision Downtown, 300 S.W. 1st Ave., Suite 155, Fort Lauderdale.

Director Flemming Fynsk's moving film The Art Whisperer is in contention for awards this year. Its subject, Ginny Williams, was an art collector and gallery owner of remarkable instinct and vision.

In any long-term relationship, patterns of behavior, control, dominance, and power are fixed. But when one person begins to change the unwritten contract, it causes ripples. The other person often retaliates or fights back to reestablish the status quo.

Now in her late 80s. Patricia Hills overcame numerous obstacles to become one of the leading scholars and curators of American art. I knew her as a radical leftist feminist at Boston University. This intriguing and insightful memoir chronicles that daunting journey. The book conflates her life as wife and mother with struggles in academia which regarded the study of American art as "too easy." As a force majeure she trained a generation of Americanist scholars and curators.