Growing Up with the Writer Ved Mehta
My father, who was blind, was obsessed with the way things looked—sometimes it felt like the British Raj was alive and well in our New York apartment.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
The Enduring Power of Peter Hujar’s “Portraits in Life and Death”
Since the photographer’s death, in 1987, the only book he published in his lifetime has attained the status of a classic.
https://newyorker.com/culture/photo…
Tacita Dean Draws Her Way Into the Menil
In the artist’s first major U.S. museum survey, she bonds with Cy Twombly through works on paper, films and photographs.
https://nytimes.com/2024/10/06/arts…
The Art of Biography: Christopher Isherwood
Katherine Bucknell, previously the editor of a four-volume edition of Christopher Isherwood’s diaries, has now published Christopher Isherwood Inside Out, an intimate and rigorous biography of the celebrated writer and gay cultural icon.
https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024…
The Priest Who Helps Women in the Mob Escape
Don Luigi Ciotti leads an anti-Mafia organization, and for decades he has run a secret operation that liberates women from the criminal underworld.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
San Francisco is changing before our eyes — just like it always has been
If there's one thing I could change about my 23 years as the San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic, it would be how I spent my first day on the beat.
https://sfchronicle.com/sf/article/…
Design Q&A: Shigeru Ban
Shigeru Ban creates architecture where purpose intersects with form. While he says he isn’t an altruist, his work suggests otherwise.
https://eamesinstitute.org/kazam-ma…
‘Places to heal, not to harm’: why brutal prison design kills off hope
From razor-wire fences and crumbling cells to no windows and overcrowding, conditions in most jails mean rehabilitation is a nonstarter. Here’s how we can create better spaces for prisoners
https://theguardian.com/society/202…
For Fredric Jameson, Marxist Criticism Was a Labor of Love
The literary critic, who died on Sunday at age 90, believed that reading was the path to revolution.
https://nytimes.com/2024/09/23/book…
“What Would Jane Jacobs Do?” Is the Wrong Question
It is fascinating to see attempts to use the ideas of Jane Jacobs to justify New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes proposal.
https://commonedge.org/what-would-j…
Trump and Vance Are Using One of America’s Oldest Racist Playbooks
By falsely linking Haitians in Springfield to the spread of infectious diseases, the GOP candidates are joining a long, terrible history.
https://thenation.com/article/polit…
Dome Improvement
Buckminster Fuller thought he had found the shape of utopia. What went wrong?
https://nyra.nyc/articles/dome-impr…
An Anatomist of Pleasure Gives Voice to the Body in Pain
Garth Greenwell has been lauded for his depiction of sex. His latest novel, “Small Rain,” unfurls within the consciousness of a patient hospitalized with a rare vascular condition.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
Justice Supply
To bring down housing costs, we need federal reform backed by a mass social movement. Liberal and left housing advocates need to take each other’s ideological positions seriously and recognize each other’s strengths.
https://placesjournal.org/article/j…
20 Life Lessons in Architecture (and Beyond)
My recent book on architectural legacies, Architectural Inheritance and Evolution in India, reaffirmed my belief in the interconnectedness of architecture and life.
https://commonedge.org/20-life-less…
Meet Ray Johnson, the Greatest Artist You’ve Never Heard Of
Almost ten years old but still relevant.
https://vanityfair.com/culture/2015…
Interviews: Garth Greenwell
The novelist on writing about the body in crisis.
https://yalereview.org/article/gart…
The Hem of His Garment
I thought that the e-mailed invitation was spam. “Nice try, Russia,” I said to my laptop screen. But the Pope really did want to meet with comics and humorists.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
A Celebratory Take on Audre Lorde’s Brave, Hard, Unconventional Life
“Survival Is a Promise,” a new biography by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, is an unabashed homage to the poet known for her political commitment and community building.
https://nytimes.com/2024/08/20/book…
There Is Design in Everything
Two exhibitions highlight the history, politics, and radical ambition of modern design in mid-20th century Cuba and Latin America.
https://placesjournal.org/article/l…
The Secret to Tom Wolfe’s Irresistible Snap, Crackle and Pop
How the author of “The Right Stuff,” “Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers” and other classics turned sociology into art.
https://nytimes.com/2024/08/15/book…
Winter of the Mind
On the front lines of the attention liberation movement.
https://nyra.nyc/articles/winter-of…
Consuming Provence: The Gentler Footprint of French Sprawl
I’ve discovered that much of the American lifestyle also exists here: expanding suburban housing developments, SUVs … and big box stores.
https://commonedge.org/consuming-pr…
The Betrayal of American Border Policy
A young Jesuit priest arrived in Texas hoping to cultivate hospitality toward migrants. During the past four years, he’s watched that possibility slip away.
https://newyorker.com/news/dispatch…
Open and shut case
Much of Geoffrey Bawa’s design is about the interplay between interior space and exterior setting. But ethnic tensions in Sri Lanka and, later, the eruption of violence meant that the architect’s house in the capital increasingly took on the air of a small fortress, as if keeping the warring world at bay
https://worldofinteriors.com/story/…
Evan Gershkovich Is Finally Coming Home
In a multinational prisoner exchange, the Wall Street Journal reporter was freed, after being detained for more than a year in Russian jail.
https://newyorker.com/news/news-des…
