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 […]
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 […]
Dear Friends: These are trying times for all of us: so many needs… so many challenges. It is indeed daunting. I think that if 2016 has taught us anything, it is that exercising our freedom of expression is a fundamental privilege we enjoy as Americans. That is why I believe the arts are so important…because […]
I am a great fan of the musical comedy Once Upon a Mattress. It is a hilarious, somewhat silly romp in which a princess is authenticated by her ability to detect a pea under twelve layers of mattresses. ArtsWestchester’s own somewhat-silly romp began when someone found a mattress hidden out of sight in our building. […]
Dear Astrid and Nadia: I am writing to let you know that I believe someday, perhaps within your lifetime, there will be a woman President of the United States (POTUS). I hope you will help make that happen. We are living in a world where possibilities for women are expanding. Girls like yourselves are becoming […]
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