Curation
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The New Generation of Online Culture Curators May 31, 2024
The current Internet landscape sometimes feels like the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”: directionless, inexplicable, bound to change in confusing ways. Our social-media feeds don’t offer much except the forward acceleration of algorithmic ...
The Condemned May 23, 2024
The shadow of the mountain range crept over the flat, arid land like outstretched fingers on San Juan Diego’s outskirts. Once known for its teeming farming, only a few residents remained in the remote village near the Mexico border. With the work gon...
The Impossible Is Indeed Possible May 10, 2024
Author Junot Diaz remembers a family member of his in the Dominican Republic who was believed to be a medium that would “become possessed” whenever she heard “certain kinds of music or certain kinds of drums.” In contrast to the rationalism that came...
The Best Books of 2024 So Far May 08, 2024
We like to think of this list of the best books of 2024 as the anti-algorithm, a collection of highly specific, highly individual, and eclectic books. (Our interests are varied! Make no mistake.) At a moment when the act of curation threatens to be o...
Veni, Verdi, Vici October 06, 2023
A dear old friend suggested this spring that maybe we all should go to the opera, as in the New York Metropolitan Opera. Yours Truly and the Far Better Half said, yes, let’s, so it came to pass that we planned to see Giuseppi Verdi’s Requiem, which i...
‘I Don’t Want to Be Erased’ October 06, 2023
In 2010, Lou Reed planned to perform with Gorillaz for their headlining set at the Glastonbury Festival, a highlight of a busy summer. Then his health took a downturn. The trouble began in Australia, where he and his partner Laurie Anderson had been ...
Wear Oh Wear Has Decorum Gone? September 29, 2023
Our culture and mores are reflected in our apparel, no? It seems, once upon a time, that duds offered a sense of general respect, not only for the individual, but for the broader community, for those other folks sitting alongside in Wrigley’s grandst...
Ram’s Horns and Church Bells September 22, 2023
Dear Intelligent American,Pardon: Maybe you’re reading this love-infused, every-Friday bundle of suggested readings, bad jokes, and rabbit-hole journeys, but are not formally subscribed. Fix that! Sign up for Civil Thoughts right here....
Malleable Identities September 15, 2023
In our age, it has become a widely accepted truism that identity is self-determined. And yet, few have been willing to tread into the menacing waters of transracialism. While the gender transitions of Caitlyn Jenner and Elliot Paige are celebrated wi...
The Death of ESPN? September 15, 2023
I was, like many children of the 1990s and 2000s, a SportsCenter kid. Every weekday morning, no matter the season, I turned my parents’ TV to ESPN to watch highlights curated by a cavalcade of charismatic and quirky anchors. Stu Scott, Scott Van Pelt...
Miss Clarence All Alone September 13, 2023
The woman still considers herself young at age 35—and acts like it. Single and childless, she spends her free time smoking and people-watching and pretending to read Stendhal at West Village cafés. She never imagined she would end up becoming an offi...
Ransacking Naples August 22, 2023
‘In Europe,’ wrote Stendhal, ‘there are only two capitals: Paris and Naples’. And for once, he wasn’t all that shy of the truth. Ever since Charles of Anjou seized the Neapolitan throne in the late thirteenth century, the two cities have been bound t...
Mina Loy’s Search for ‘An Alternative Order of Things’ August 22, 2023
The last time Mina Loy had a solo exhibition was in 1959, at the Bodley Gallery in New York, a show curated by her friend Marcel Duchamp. The near invisibility of her visual art since that distinguished event can be explained in part by her restlessn...
Corrosive Curation August 17, 2023
It is impossible to identify the first museum. Archeologists have found evidence of sites dating back to c. 530 B.C.E containing artefacts from early Mesopotamian Civilisations. In Britain, early museums often restricted their access to wealthy patro...
An Antidote to Our Disenchanted Age August 17, 2023
The following review is part of RealClear Books & Culture's symposium on Joseph Epstein's 'The Novel, Who Needs It?'Countless pundits have put forth theories of how to escape our current moment of social atomization and existential decay. For these p...
The Poisoned Well August 16, 2023
Art is often treated like an accessory, an emblem, a representation of whatever you hope your identity to be. The prints on your wall, the music in your playlists, the books you have read or pretended to read—all add up, in this shoot-first digital c...
What’s Going On at TCM? August 08, 2023
We'll always have Paris, but for a time, it seemed as if we might not always have Turner Classic Movies.Since 1994, TCM has aired films, uncut and commercial-free, 24 hours a day, all enhanced by monthly themed and curated programming, hosted introdu...
Internet Historians & the Joke of Online Culture June 07, 2023
The internet is an endless trove of art and culture. It’s easy to think that it’ll be around forever. Young people are often warned, for example, not to put anything scandalous online because “what’s online stays online.” There’s some truth to this. ...
The Other Monet June 02, 2023
Claude Monet (1840–1926) is one of France’s most famous and beloved painters, but until now almost nobody has heard of Monet’s older brother, Léon (1836–1917). Léon Monet was a Rouen-based color chemist, industrialist, and an early patron and collect...
