My last column on Shakespeare in the Park bemoaned the loss of the art of courtship by words. Then I learned in a unexpected but welcome counterpoint that Erin McKean's new website, Wordnik, had debuted.

I met Erin at a design conference some years back. She...

The full title of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is Twelfth Night or What you Will now in a joyous production by Daniel Sullivan at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park and though scholars apparently believe the subtitle confers the meaning of Christmas merriment or underscores the entitlement of...

Just when you thought New York was down on its luck and was being demoted to the downfall capital, when Bernie Madoff was being sentenced to twice the average life span, when the politicians like Bloomberg, Klein, Patterson were fighting to hang onto their jobs, when restaurants were seducing diners...

If you say the word ballet to most people, up will pop an image of a girl in a white tutu looking vaguely swan-like, standing on her toes.

This is probably because the most famous ballet of all time -- and for my money,...

For decades, Lena Horne has been an emblem of the complicated equation of race and talent. Today, we need look no further than Barack Obama for guidance about how to rise above the question of color and capability.

Lena...

The story of La Traviata , the great Verdi opera, is classic 19th century female-disaster prone and turns on the love life of a woman with loose morals (see Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Nana et al) who has a change of heart. The original novel by Dumas, La Dame...

The Art Institute of Chicago's New Modern Wing

Architects all over the world are extremely jealous of Renzo Piano . If he weren't such a nice guy, there would probably be an AIA contract out on him. As it is, Piano...

Francis Bacon: Three Studies for a Self Portrait

When they think of Francis Bacon, most people think: torment. Tortured and torqued figures, wailing, screaming, headless, chinless, from world and his personal history, portrayed under attack for being gay (which was actually illegal when he began...

It was while waiting on line at the will call behind a thirtysomething female bass player in a rock band and her composer boyfriend that I realized that Leonard Cohen was still speaking to all those who seek answers to the impenetrables.

The couple told me their fathers had...

What do Sofia Coppola (director), Eric Fischl (painter), Mike Kelley (artist), Jim Lapine (director), Laura Owens (painter), Carrie Mae Weems (artist), Brad Bird (Incredibles, Ratattouille), John Lasseter (Pixar), Katey Sagal (actress), Tim Burton (director), Matt Mullican (artist), Andrew Stanton (Wall-E), Bill Irwin (performance artist), Don Cheadle (actor) and Julie Taymor...

Credit: Reel Sessions

Hollywood is littered with stories of good projects gone south, noble intentions gone awry. Just as you are shoring up one dike, another busts loose. When people ask what producers do, this is what I tell them: you are a one person...

Arthur Phillips. Credit Andrea von Lintel

Though most people have been having love affairs with their iPods for a number of years now, I am late to the deejay party.

Yet I am no less ardent; though I used to raise an eyebrow at those...

In the old days before digital photography and Photoshop were able to transform everybody and anything in something else willy nilly, art directors would have legions of staffers doing nothing but things called paste-ups: actual physically manipulated cut and pasted images they would then photograph until they got it right....

Sophie Calle. Prenez soin de vous. Correctrice, Valérie Lermite. Take Care of Yourself. Proof-Reader, Valérie Lermite, 2007 portrait

William Congreve, an English Restoration playwright wrote in his tragedy The Mourning Bride, "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury...

A few weeks ago I was flying transcon and miraculously got an upgrade. I was afraid to take out my knitting surrounded by all those titans, and let me just say that on this particular flight there was a famous titan riding commercial seated...

I am one of the legion of Sylvia Plath-Ted Hughes acolytes who populates the fringes of literary history.

Like many young women, I found The Bell Jar, written by Plath, to be the first novel that dared broach subjects I was wrestling with myself. After at least a half dozen...

It's hard not to gush about William Kentridge.

Part shaman, part tech wizard, part entrepreneur, part educator, part apostle, part witness, part historian. Or you could just say that his definition of an artist encompasses all these things.