Arts

Arts

The True Meaning of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"

In Charles Dickens's day, his novel A Christmas Carol was credited with reviving enthusiasm for a holiday, that, incredibly, had fallen out of favor with the public and appeared to be on the wane.  Needless to say, modern marketing will never permit such heresy again.   Nonetheless, Dickens'

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Arts

A Serious Conversation About "Scrapbooks: An American History" with Jessica Helfand

When I met Jessica Helfand five or six years ago, I was dumbstruck when she told me that one of the joys of having moved full-time to Falls Village from New York City was having more time to work. (I thought country life was all about recreation, but I'

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Arts

"This Wonderful Life" at Barrington Stage Company

Could there be a better moment for a Christmas play about a despairing banker who considers suicide because his savings-and-loan is about to go under and, with help from an angel, rediscovers the meaning of life?  Timing is everything in theater as in life, and Barrington Stage Company (BSC) has

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Arts

Celebrity Book Signings at Hammertown and Privet House

A bona fide celebrity—not just someone who is accomplished or has a well-known name—is a person whom you've always wanted to see in the flesh to determine whether the image you have from magazines and television is accurate.  Both Mario Batali, the restaurateur and Food Network

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Arts

Channelling Katharine Hepburn at TriArts in Sharon

There was no one more tweedy and New England than Katharine Hepburn, which is why it seems so apt that the TriArts Sharon Playhouse is presenting Tea at Five, a one woman show about the legendary actress, for the Thanksgiving weekend.   The production originated last summer at TheatreWorks in New

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Arts

Carrie Haddad Opens a Brave New Photography Gallery

Since she opened her first gallery in Hudson in 1991, Carrie Haddad has been exhibiting photography as well as paintings, most recently in her eponymous gallery at 622 Warren Street.  "I have a history of showing photography and an audience for it," she says. "But it'

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Arts

The Glory & The Grandeur: Antiquities Gallery Opens in Hudson

When the present is uncertain, it can be comforting to look to the past, particularly to a great and distant era.  Which is why no period in human history will ever supplant "the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome" as a reliable wellspring of revivals.

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Arts

Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Jacques Kaplan in Kent

Jacques Kaplan, the pioneering art dealer in Kent, CT, was a larger than life figure.  A one-time Fifth Avenue furrier, who collaborated on coats with artists such as Frank Stella in the go-go sixties, he ran his Paris-New York-Kent Gallery in a caboose by Kent's old railroad station

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Arts

All That Jazz: Wanda Houston Sings with Heart & Soul

When Wanda Houston sings her zippy version of "Over the Rainbow," it's as if you've never heard the Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg tune before.  When she puts a gospel spin on Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin',"

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Arts

A Major Sol LeWitt Retrospective at Mass MoCA

Sol LeWitt, one of the most influential artists of the last half century, so opposed the notion of artist-as-celebrity, it's hard to imagine, had he lived, how he would have grappled with the opening this weekend at MASS MoCA.   Never mind that the exhibition is a landmark retrospective

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Arts

Duncan Sheik Comes to Albany & Great Barrington

Duncan Sheik, the 38-year-old alternative rocker and songwriter, has had a cult following since his days at Brown University.  He made Broadway history when Spring Awakening, his musical about adolescent sexuality, opened to rave reviews on Broadway. "A straight shot of eroticism steamed open last night at the Eugene

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Arts

The Murder of Lidice; A Multi-Media Event

With the very air around us still crackling with political energy, the Spencertown Academy will host a live performance of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "The Murder of Lidice" this Friday night. On June 10, 1942, the German government announced that it had destroyed the small

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