rakemag First, let’s get the pronunciation right. It’s Read (pronounced “red”), not Read (pronounced “reed”). Get it? Good. Second, what’s going on here is usually a comment on something I’ve read lately. It could be a book, but more likely, it’s going to be a newspaper or magazine. There are a lot of good ones out … Read more
There are colleges in cities and colleges in cornfields, but a college on a hill is an especially pleasing thing. Serious students deserve a space that is elevated, that is dedicated to learning for its own sake, free from the corruption of the “real world.” The modern idea that equates a college degree with employability … Read more
Once I had a boyfriend whose purpose in life was to pick a meaningless fight with me daily. Predictably, he would become furious when I was unwilling to participate. He would retaliate by sputtering, “You just want everything to be so easy!” Cue to me looking incredulous, with a silent scream of, “Uhhhh DUH?” We’d … Read more
The artist came from new york; the helicopter, from houston. The pilot arrived from new jersey and, at the artist’s direction, positioned his craft outside the two-story window wall at midway’s massive new gallery. For a couple of hours it hovered there, its searchlight trained on the crowd gathered for opening night. Some availed themselves … Read more
A couple years back—this was before everyone started talking about exhibition designers—it seemed like curators were eclipsing artists as the hot thing in the art world. (That is, when architects weren’t hogging the spotlight with their museum designs, but we digress …) How did this happen? One likely factor was the rise in demand for … Read more
MCP’s latest exhibit is something of a tearjerker in a blue state like Minnesota. Terry Gydesen documents the glory that was the Democratic presidential campaigns, proving that black and white is just the medium to highlight crisp lines in the Johns’ expensive suits. Diana Walker, Time’s White House photographer for twenty years, captures candid moments … Read more
Pondering presidents past may help some of us to blot out the current administration. The Smithsonian, that repository of weird keepsakes and relevant ephemera, has sent us this traveling exhibit of presidential history, comprising some 350 doodads and artifacts. Some are breathtaking (Jackie O.’s ball gown), some impressive (Lincoln’s inkwell, used to write the Emancipation … Read more
If you’ve got some religion in you, but find the standard holiday depictions just a tad predictable (Mary in the blue robe, Mary taking orders from angels, Mary in the bathtub), check out Chinese painter He Qi’s cubist visions. China’s most popular Christian artist has a wild and playful style that is more hedonistic than … Read more
How does it happen that one of the major creative forces of the twentieth century has gone mostly unnoticed by the art world? Painter and personality Beauford Delaney inspired artists like Georgia O’Keefe, Louis Armstrong, and James Baldwin, and his own expressive and distinctive modernist works capture the blues aesthetic of his time. Though Delaney’s … Read more
In advance of a new novel from Eco (The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, due next summer), we are treated to a compilation of essays in which the renowned novelist and heavyweight scholar wrestles with the universe of language and writing. At once scholarly and sardonic, On Literature collects eighteen essays on everything from syntax … Read more