Sure, it wasn’t until the 1950s that New York finally wrested the “art capital of the world” title away from Paris. But it’s not as if Jackson Pollock et al didn’t have help from their predecessors, especially before the Depression. That’s when innovators like Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, Gerald Murphy, and … Read more
At Palubinskas’ debut show in the Cities last year, we heard one wag comment, “If I went off my medicine for a few days, I could paint that.” But just because you hallucinate, it doesn’t make you a painter. Palubinskas is a painter. Trained as an art conservator in her native Lithuania, her technique is … Read more
These designs are intended more for the mind than the body. Take Geum’s “web dress,” an ephemeral creation that weaves wire and air to represent the worldwide web, the hold technology has on our lives, and the rise of an interwoven global culture that is blurring the distinctions between countries. The Korean designer works in … Read more
The Foreign Service Exam, that portal into the exciting world of international diplomacy, is given once a year, in the spring, on the same day in thousands of locations across the country. Results of the test arrive in the mailboxes of test-takers in the fall. For some, these are not pretty. There are four parts: … Read more
In recent years, young women have begun to reclaim labor-intensive, old-fashioned “women’s work” like knitting and quilting, which their grandmothers perfected and their mothers likely shunned. Some of these women, such as Jessica Rankin, a thirty-four-year-old trained as a painter, aren’t just reclaiming these crafts; they’re elevating them to high-art status. A few years ago, … Read more
Sometime this winter, once the tourist season winds down, the owners of Morell’s Chippewa Trading Post in Bemidji will remove a giant taxidermied wolf from the glass case out front, say a few solemn words, and send it off to be destroyed. It’s likely the end will come by fire, though the store’s assistant manager, … Read more
Even within the obscure subcult of fire truck restoration buffs, Jeffrey Schadt is a bit unusual. Most of these gentlemen are ex-firemen or have always wanted to be one, and most own just one truck, which gets polished and brought out for special occasions but will never be returned to service. Schadt (pronounced “Shade”) is … Read more
In the first display at the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame in downtown St. Louis, a caveman mannequin with an oversized cranium and pronounced underbite grasps a huge stone. Underneath, a card explains: “THE BEGINNING OF BOWLING. Is this how bowling began, with a stone-age hunter tossing a rock at a formation of … Read more
One of the things we try to be vigilant about is a sort of inflexible all-or-nothingism. We recognize it as a minor character flaw, and lately we’ve been working on it. It’s not that the dough of our idealism has lost its leavening. It’s just been punched down by a bit of realism. Nowhere has … Read more
It’s a happy coincidence that Theatre Unbound’s all-female version of The Tempest opens on the heels of the all-male “original practices” production of Measure for Measure by Shakespeare’s Globe Theater company, which is a guest of the Guthrie for this presentation. We’re waiting on the edges of our seats to see what these talented actresses … Read more