Arts

Arts

The Rising Son of Genji’s World in Japanese Woodblock Prints at Vassar

By Robert Burke Warren Throughout time and across the globe, cultures rise, fall, and evolve with one constant: storytelling. While some stories die with their tellers, others are durable and mutable enough to claim immortality. Westerners often cite Shakespeare and epic poet Homer as masters, yet our culture overlooks the

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Arts

Review: "Clybourne Park" at Barrington Stage

There's a new word -- "authentrification" -- that developers in New York City are using to justify renovating buildings that once served low-income communities and turning them into "authentic" hangouts for free-spending hipsters. Is this awesome or awful? The vicissitudes of gentrification are at

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Arts

Yes We Cannes: The FilmColumbia Festival In Chatham

By Scott Baldinger Chatham’s charming Main Street seems to be in a quiescent stage these days, with a noticeable reduction of retail and pedestrian activity on its handful of blocks. (Thankfully, The Blue Plate, Yianni's, the Thompson Giroux  Gallery, American Pie, The Chatham Bookstore, The Main Street

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Arts

Fellowship of the Five-String: Béla Fleck NY Banjo Summit at the Mahaiwe

By Robert Burke Warren The ongoing saga of the banjo is uniquely American: enslaved Africans bring a deceptively humble instrument from their homeland, whites appropriate and Victorianize it, the burgeoning multi-ethnic folk culture seizes it, mid-20th-century protestors wield it, and, finally, an urban kid – Béla Fleck –hears it on the

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Arts

A Palace of Memory: Anselm Kiefer Invades MASS MoCA

Kiefer's "Velimir Chlebnikov," series at MASS MoCA; all photos courtesy of the Hall Art FoundationBy Nichole Dupont There is nothing lighthearted about an Anselm Kiefer exhibit. The literal weight of his medium — lead, concrete, dirt — can be felt and seen in the near-monumental scale of his

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Arts

A New Spotlight For the Independents: The Beacon Independent Film Festival

By Robert Burke Warren An old musician temporarily outwits the Grim Reaper and gets an extra decade of life, during which he nurtures his community; a mom n’ pop cryonics operation promises immortality and thrives, despite the scoffing of scientists; a middle-aged mother struggles to save her prescription pill-addicted daughter,

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Arts

"Love Where You Live" - Hammertown's Mantra Is Now A Book, Too

By Dan Shaw If grown-up life is really high school all over again and again, then the Rural Intelligence region finally has a yearbook thanks to Joan Osofsky of Hammertown: Love Where You Live: At Home in the Country, a coffee-table design tome published by Rizzoli that features 18 country

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Arts

Happening on the Hudson: Lit Lions and Pop Provocateurs at Basilica Soundscape

By Robert Burke Warren “Anything can happen here," says Melissa Auf der Maur, former Smashing Pumpkins/Hole bassist, and rising Upstate arts maven.  “This place is a shape shifter, a beast." She’s speaking of Basilica Hudson, the multi-purpose venue she and her filmmaker husband, Tony Stone, opened

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Arts

Frenemies, A Love/Hate Story: "Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah" at Barrington Stage

Photos by Kevin SpragueBy Jeremy D. Goodwin With friends like this, who needs enemies? The simplest reference to famed literary frenemies F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway conjures a sense of Jazz Age glamour, a romantic notion of novelists as pop stars, living off the largesse of their rich friends

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Arts

Legacy Act: Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion Celebrate New CD, New Sound at Helsinki

By Robert Burke Warren Some legacy-bearers follow directly in their ancestors’ footsteps, keeping to tradition, and carrying on in a predictable vein. Others, like Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, challenge expectations, a more risky prospect; she is Arlo’s daughter, he is John Steinbeck’s grandnephew, and, since 2004,

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Arts

From Bach to Bawdy, Sonnets to Sonatas, Shakespeare to Schubert: Music and More in the Berkshires

By Robert Burke Warren Attendees of the 2013 Music and More Festival in New Marlborough, Massachusetts enjoy the unique experience of walking into history, both literally and figuratively; the impeccably performed chamber music, jazz, Renaissance reels, and Elizabethan poetry take place in the township’s circa 1839 Meeting House, home

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Arts

Ghost Adventures: Edith Wharton Live (and in Spirit) at the Mount

By Sarah Ellen Rindsberg It’s time to visit your stately but inviting neighbor in the Berkshires: Edith Wharton. Although the esteemed writer will not be there in the flesh to greet you, her spirit reigns in more ways than one. Which is a good thing: she was a lovely

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