These principals of the architectural firm WORKac found it challenging to design their own home. The psychological complexity of domestic life? The culmination of years of thought? “The hardest thing about designing our house was that we just haven’t designed a lot of houses.” Produced with the Center for Architecture. Photo: Harry Willks.
The artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company summarizes his aesthetic: “The curtain goes up, twenty minutes happen, the curtain comes down, and it is transformative.” Easy to say, brilliant to achieve. And they do.
One way to describe art is to note that it has beauty but not utility. This poet rejects that dichotomy, especially when it comes to everyday objects. “Often, things that are domestic are diminished because they are connected to females.” She loves things that are both beautiful and useful: quilts, fans, teapots. A conversation with … Continue reading »
Author of The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, he is as sophisticated an intellectual as any of his colleagues at The New Yorker. The book that set him on his path? A Hardy Boys mystery, The Secret of the Old Mill. “I read this, and my heart was pounding. And I thought, I want to … Continue reading »
This actor, perhaps best known as Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl and Joe Goldberg in the Netflix series You, is modest about his craft. “The only thing that’s ours as actors is how we feel as we say lines we didn’t write, as we wear clothes we didn’t purchase or even choose.” The importance of emotional honesty, the burden of … Continue reading »
This terrific graphic designer loves, without nostalgia, the world of print magazines where she began. She cautions her students, denizens of the online realm, “Everything looks cool on screen.” Her prescription: “Buy a printer, buy a printer, buy a printer.” The seductive deceptions of the digital, the bracing revelations of the physical. Presented with the … Continue reading »
When this sculptor creates a statue of a historical figure―Sojourner Truth, Ella Fitzgerald, Teddy Roosevelt―she learns a lot about her subject. While conceiving a more metaphoric project, Victory, she made a disconcerting discovery: there are no Black angels in public art. “Are you trying to say there are no Black people in heaven?” she demanded. … Continue reading »
Some scholars toil away their lives, humbly adding their mote to the supply of human knowledge. Then there was Selma Barkham. “She was responsible for finding out something about Newfoundland that nobody had ever known,” says Annie Proulx. A fine writer––The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain––tells the story of an extraordinary scholar. Presented with the American Academy of Arts and … Continue reading »
This sculptor, perhaps best known for a series of piece resembling captured tornadoes, describes how her darker feelings affect her work: “As artists, we are very sensitive to pain, but we don’t just use it as something to whine about, but as a probing tool.” No whining? No wonder I’m not an artist. Well, that … Continue reading »
His most recent book, Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth, is surprisingly upbeat for a book whose title includes the words “rescuing” and “heal.” I discovered him through an earlier work, The Experience of Place, in honor of which we break format and, instead of person place thing, talk place place place. Continue reading »
She is as sophisticated as any architect working today, as her glorious Aqua Tower attests, yet she still learns from birds. “Not to build a building that looks like a nest but to consider what’s available, what is nearby, what could be put to use.” She’s also learned from Marcus Aurelius, although he was not capable of … Continue reading »
She is a fashion designer whose work is in the permanent collection of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her guiding precept: “I just like the clothes to be useful, you know? That’s really the basic thing.” What I could use is pants that cook my dinner, but I’m not … Continue reading »
When he was a boy, his great-uncle Buckminster Fuller often came to the house. “He would clear his throat halfway through dinner, then stand up and talk for three hours.” When Marvel was a young man, he stayed in Isamu Noguchi’s studio. “In return for living there, I cooked for him on Sundays.” (As a … Continue reading »
At age nine, he saw a Leonard Bernstein Young People’s Concert featuring Dmitiri Shostakovich and something happened. In a good way. Trauma free. A conversation with the Pulitzer-winning composer, introduced by Ralph Farris, violist in the quartet Ethel and creator of Co-Lab, a virtual conference on collaboration. And these guys have. Splendidly. Continue reading »