I’ve always been aware of the preconception that people who choose to be artists are, well, not quite normal. However, I got a chance to judge this for myself when I visited artists in their studios in Manhattan and Brooklyn along with my drawing class. The trip seemed like ...

It’s fitting that the two floors housing the exhibitions “Picasso and American Art” (reviewed in the issue of October 12) and “Edward Hopper: Highlights from the Collection” are adjacent. These shows typify two different trends of 20th century American art in response to the welter of European modernism: on ...

Acting is the art of seeming, not being,” Carl Stone Jr. intones self-importantly to the wide-eyed ingénue Elfie Fay, the on (and off) stage Ophelia to his Hamlet. In cynically giving her the cold hard facts about the “world’s second oldest profession,” i.e. acting, he tells her that if he were to play the part of an actor who was playing the role of Hamlet, “that would still be acting.” The irony is, of course, that we the audience are watching an actor, in this instance Kent Kuran ’08, doing just that.

So I was cold lounging with my niece in Seattle, just sitting, watching Dora the Explorer and shooting the shit. My niece is nearly a year old, so her opinions are not quite as developed or polished as they could be, but she’s got some thoughts and a taste for the higher things.

I started home for Thanksgiving Tuesday afternoon, willingly cutting shorter my half-week of classes to add a full day to my debutante preparations. It hadn’t taken me long to pack and add a few necessary additions to cover every possible situation and temperature that four and a half days in Jackson, Mississippi on a debutante and holiday week could throw at me.

Justin Pierce Baldwin Gerald: I live my life in a state of bemused annoyance. Sometimes, mostly on the weekends, the irritation subsides, and I experience fleeting moments of unadulterated joy. At other times, the humor that keeps me afloat is overrun by pet peeves, and my measured displeasure becomes a ...