The news came without warning on April 13. A work by the 71-year-old artist Ingri Egeberg, reported Sunnhordland, a newspaper in western Norway, had been seriously damaged. According to Vårt Land, the national daily that soon snapped up the story,…
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty” — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. –John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” Fourteen years ago, my not yet girlfriend, Cindy, lived on Hamstead Heath, London. Every…
The year was 1999. My Norwegian partner and I were living in Amsterdam. One morning I saw in the newspaper (this was back when one read actual newspapers) that there was an exhibition at the Rotterdam Kunsthal of a contemporary…
The United States and the broader community of NATO allies have responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by swiftly severing most economic links with Russia. Major corporations have ceased doing business with Russia, including ExxonMobil, Ford, Nike,…
Two antiquarian books lie before me. The first is a copy of George Wharton Edwards’ Vanished Halls & Cathedrals of France, published in 1917 after the author, an American impressionist painter, traveled through the battle-scarred cities and villages along the…
Creative Types and Other Stories Tom Bissell Pantheon, 224 pages, $24 The Hack, one of seven short stories in journalist and fiction writer Tom Bissell’s latest offering, Creative Types and Other Stories, succinctly articulates the raison d’être of its collection: “Talented…
BRIMFIELD, Mass. — “We are living in a throwaway culture,” Pope Francis observed this summer. “What is useless is discarded.” The pope speaks of people, specifically the elderly, the unborn, and the disabled, i.e., the inefficient. Disposable, however, seems an…
Promenades By Nicolas Sarkozy (Herscher, 304 pages, $33) Published on September 22. Only available in French. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy made headlines this year when he became the first president in French history to receive a prison sentence. In…
Many people are enchanted by a simple theory: creating art that expresses hidden feelings alongside an art therapist can be just as effective, if not more effective than traditional psychotherapy. Hundreds of clinics in the United States offer “art therapy”…
