This week’s “This and That by JL” is a post by Mary Alice Franklin, ArtsWestchester’s prodigious Communications Manager & ArtsNews Editor, who stayed glued to the TV screen to the bitter end on Oscars night. Seems like Westchester is a county of talent, which Mary Alice has assured us of. Through the blunders and flubs, Westchester […]
In this era of fake news, it seems like most anything goes. Strange now to say, that wasn’t what I learned as a journalism student at NYU. Fact checking was our honor system and, as I recall, no one dared to risk the wrath of Professor Ben Yablonsky. Another thing I learned at NYU is […]
Last week, wandering through Neuberger Museum of Art, I was transported to the Greenwich Village and Lower East Side of my youth. Graphic and sculptural interpretations of Campbell Soup cans, bathrobes, lipsticks and other ordinary objects were suddenly appearing in galleries as high ticket items. The movement that started in the fifties seemed to flourish and expand […]
The recent focus on women’s issues has got me thinking about women I admire. Growing up in the age of lush movie musicals, I had this visual image of Debbie Reynolds as a cheery, romantic ingenue, tenaciously clinging to her perkiness and proper upbringing. Indeed, she fit the mold of “everyone’s sweetheart.” Her passing in […]
It seems that ever since the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was created, it has been under siege. Although it is a tiny agency, less than 0.006% of the $3.54 Trillion federal budget, it has had enormous impact on the quality, abundance and diversity of the arts in America through its 140,000 grants, totaling […]
There is something so very elegant about Henri Matisse. He can take a line and magically turn it into a portrait so recognizable that only a few strokes of his pen are necessary. This French master was known to have said: “If I trust my drawing hand it is because in training it to serve […]
The New Year is almost upon us, and, funny, what popped into my head is an old ditty I learned as a child in the schoolyard of Public School 104 in Bayswater, Queens. It goes: “Reuben, Reuben, I’ve been thinking what a fine world it would be, if all the men were transplanted, far across […]
Who among us does not remember the parental admonition “It’s not the gift, but the thought that counts”? I always think of my mother and my proper upbringing at this time of year. I re-live the powerful Gift of the Magi story and revel in the beauty of the sacrificial spirit of love between a […]
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