Jane L. Levere is a New York-based freelance journalist who has covered business, advertising, media, the arts and travel for a wide range of leading publications. She has contributed to the daily and Sunday business sections of The New York Times since 1995, and also currently writes for Institutional Investor, Travel & Leisure and TravelandLeisure.com, Metropolitan Home, More, ARTnews, ForbesTraveler.com and BizBash.com.

She also has written for Conde Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, Brides and Advertising Age, and served as the on-air travel specialist for WNBC's "Weekend Today in New York." Before embarking on her freelance career, Jane held editorial positions at Frequent Flyer, Travel Weekly and Editor & Publisher, and served as the deputy public affairs director of the White House Conference on Families.

She holds a bachelor of arts degree in American Studies from Smith College.

Blog Entries by Jane Levere

Seen and Heard in New York: Liv Ullmann, Joan Osborne, Charlotte Rampling, Alec Baldwin and Robert Frank

Posted December 22, 2009 | 05:44 PM (EST)


Although Liv Ullmann's highly acclaimed production of A Streetcar Named Desire with Cate Blanchett ended its run yesterday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it might live on in film, if not on the Broadway stage.

According to a report in the New York Times last week, "several...

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Carnegie Hall's Chinese Culture Festival Extends Beyond the Music World and West 57th Street to Chelsea Galleries

Posted November 6, 2009 | 07:52 PM (EST)


Athough Carnegie Hall is the presenter of the current "Ancient Paths Modern Voices" festival (http://www.carnegiehall.org/chinafestival/) in New York, celebrating Chinese culture, the festival extends far beyond the music world and august hall on West 57th Street.

A number of art galleries--many in Chelsea--and other institutions are mounting art...

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Open House New York Offers Free Access to Architectural Wonders This Weekend

Posted October 9, 2009 | 11:33 AM (EST)


This weekend's Open House New York celebration will offer New Yorkers free access to places they can't easily visit, everything from the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, the world's oldest subway tunnel, to a museum of models of the work of the architect Richard Meier.

The celebration, the organization's seventh, will...

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At the Tender Age of 39, Spike Jonze Receives a Retrospective at MoMA

Posted October 7, 2009 | 08:37 PM (EST)


Although he's not yet 40, filmmaker Spike Jonze is the subject of a retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art that starts this week.

Titled Spike Jonze: The First 80 Years -- a name Jonze playfully coined -- the mid-career retrospective will feature films he directed and...

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Redford, Woodward and Bernstein to Discuss Collaboration on All the President's Men

2 Comments | Posted September 11, 2009 | 01:20 PM (EST)


Film buffs will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity this weekend to hear Robert Redford, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward discuss their collaboration on the film, All the President's Men.

The conversation will take place at the BAM Rose Cinema 3 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of a 16-film...

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Leslie Caron to Publish Memoirs, Star in English-Language Sondheim Revival in Paris

12 Comments | Posted September 5, 2009 | 02:41 PM (EST)


The more things change, the more they stay the same, for Leslie Caron at least.

The 78-year-old actress will soon play the role of Madame Armfeldt, created by Hermione Gingold in the original 1973 production of A Little Night Music, on the Paris stage. Gingold portrayed her grandmother in...

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Michelle Obama Designer Toledo Loves Lace

1 Comments | Posted July 20, 2009 | 07:19 PM (EST)


Isabel Toledo loved lace long before Michelle Obama discovered both Toledo and lace.

Toledo--who designed the now world-famous, lemongrass-yellow coat and sheath dress, made of Swiss wool lace, that Michelle Obama wore to her husband's inauguration--said she has been working with the manufacturer of the lace, St....

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"Jazz in July" NYC Style

Posted July 18, 2009 | 12:46 PM (EST)


The city of New York will take pride of place in this summer's "Jazz in July" festival at the 92nd Street Y, which begins Tuesday night, July 21, and runs through July 30.
The festival--the fifth under artistic director Bill Charlap, the noted pianist and Blue Note recording artist--features...

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Chubby Checker Celebrates Lincoln Center's 50th Anniversary

Posted July 9, 2009 | 05:41 PM (EST)


Lincoln Center's 50th anniversary celebration last night brought back a blast from the past: singer Chubby Checker, who made "The Twist" famous.

Checker performed for some 3,500 people in Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park as part of the "Midsummer Night Swing" public dance series; he was invited to perform on...

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Public Theater Gala

1 Comments | Posted July 7, 2009 | 11:28 AM (EST)


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New York's Public Theater helped put Susan Lyne where she is today.

Currently chief executive of the Gilt Groupe, an invitation-only, online fashion retailer, and former chief executive of Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Lyne was honored by the theater at its recent...

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Tony Blair in New York

1 Comments | Posted June 26, 2009 | 10:55 AM (EST)


Tony Blair is optimistic peace can be achieved in the Middle East during the administration of President Barack Obama.

Speaking this week at the 92nd Street Y in New York, the former British Prime Minister who is currently special envoy of the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, made up...

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Science and the Arts to Meet Up Tonight in New York

1 Comments | Posted June 10, 2009 | 03:22 PM (EST)


The worlds of science and the arts -- which don't frequently intersect -- will meet tonight in New York, at the opening gala of the World Science Festival.

Now in its second year, the festival is five days of events designed, according to its founders, to celebrate "imagination,...

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Nichols Looks Back at the Birth of "The Graduate," Redford's Screen Test for it

2 Comments | Posted June 5, 2009 | 05:30 PM (EST)


Baby boomers aren't the only ones who wax nostalgic about the 1967 film, The Graduate.

Mike Nichols, its director, and Buck Henry, who co-wrote the screenplay, did it themselves at a recent program at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, part of a two-week retrospective of Nichols'...

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Tata Hopes to Introduce $2,300 Compact Car in U.S. in Two Years

30 Comments | Posted June 4, 2009 | 10:50 AM (EST)


Watch out Ford, Chrysler and GM: You could soon have another foreign car manufacturer invading your market.

Ratan N. Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, the Indian conglomerate whose Tata Motors unit introduced the highly publicized Tata Nano, a $2,300 compact car, in March, said in New York...

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Rockefeller, Drucker Look Back as Lincoln Center Turns 50

Posted May 29, 2009 | 11:42 AM (EST)


The recent kick-off of the 50th anniversary celebration of New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts brought back memories to some of the complex's 1959 ground-breaking ceremony.

At a special program at Alice Tully Hall hosted by Tom Brokaw, New York Philharmonic music director-designate Alan Gilbert conducted orchestra...

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Smellorama Redux: New and Improved on Manhattan's Upper East Side

2 Comments | Posted May 28, 2009 | 03:15 PM (EST)


Although some of New York City's best-known aromas originate in the subway system in the summer, automotive exhaust, and even a fenugreek processing plant in North Bergen, N.J., of all places, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum aims to add some new ones to this pantheon.

On May 31,...

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Kelli O'Hara on the Pleasures of Pregnancy

Posted May 19, 2009 | 05:24 PM (EST)


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The cockeyed optimist portrayed by Kelli O'Hara in her starring role as Nellie Forbush in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of South Pacific doesn't seem to be entirely an act.

O'Hara, an Oklahoma native who is expecting her first child this...

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Symphony Space Returns With Its Annual Marathon, This Year Saluting the Broadway Musical

Posted May 14, 2009 | 09:46 PM (EST)


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This Saturday's "Wall to Wall Broadway" marathon at Symphony Space in Manhattan will be a unique opportunity to hear many of the top tunes from the past 105 years of Broadway musical theater.

Although the marathon -- a program that...

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Wintour Discusses Retailers' Prospects, Vogue.com and the Influence of Advertisers on Vogue's Content

3 Comments | Posted May 14, 2009 | 10:08 AM (EST)


Not surprisingly, a conversation last night in New York between hotelier Jonathan Tisch and Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, who infrequently appears in public, began with a PETA protest.

PETA supporters shrieked and waved a banner from the balcony of the auditorium at the 92nd Street Y, where...

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Happy 110th, Duke!

1 Comments | Posted May 7, 2009 | 05:35 PM (EST)


It wasn't your typical weekday commute on the New York City subway.

To celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of composer and bandleader Duke Ellington last week, his namesake orchestra played in the subway station at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem--not far from the Apollo...

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