In the middle of the 18th century in the city of Ancona on the Adriatic coast of central Italy, a young Jewish girl, about age 15, produced a stunning work of embroidery.
Some works of art are perfect receptacles for the stresses and troubles of their times while they are graced with a wisdom that is fundamental and ongoing, making them perpetually relevant.
If there’s one thing museums have learned from the pandemic that forced them into cyberspace, it’s that the audience that is hungry for what they have to offer—whether lectures, courses or archival treasures—is much larger than they knew.
The world lost a towering figure in the field of design this year. Graphic artist, illustrator, teacher, icon maker, art director and creative thinker Milton Glaser passed away after a long illness on June 26, his 91st birthday.
Confined to her home studio outside Tel Aviv during the COVID-19 lockdown, artist Zoya Cherkassky started producing a painting a day.
Recalling a past that was so different from wartime and its terrors, she wrote: “I was only familiar with one of them, the one perfumed with luxury and flowered with orchids.”
A master of the English language who was not born into it, Stoppard exhibits an arresting verbal dexterity, a mix of joy, wit and wordplay.
In many ways, Edith Halpert embodied the spirit of American pragmatism, which is how she explained herself: “I either had to stagnate, which was a thing I dreaded, or go ahead, and the only way to go ahead was to do something beyond what I was doing.”
First, there was nation-building folk dance. Then came influences from European expressionism and American modern dance. Now, Israeli dance has come into its own and is in great demand on stages around the world.
The backward tale, coupled with having young, inexperienced performers play the roles of older adults, just wasn’t believable to audiences, and the show flopped after 16 performances.
