Coming Attractions
Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, television, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.
Read the Latest
The Arts Fuse Currents
Music
Ahead of a run of shows with Boston’s Naya Rockers, the veteran Jamaican musician looks back on the Gladiators, Lee “Scratch” Perry, political “sleepwalking,” and a career still driven by curiosity.
Visual Arts
This ambitious catalogue is strongest when it treats Rothko’s paintings as shifting perceptual structures—and weakest when it resolves them into metaphysical comfort.
Film
Douglas Tirola’s documentary draws on a remarkable archive to make Leonard Bernstein’s musical, political, and moral commitments feel urgently contemporary.
Books
This ambitious catalogue is strongest when it treats Rothko’s paintings as shifting perceptual structures—and weakest when it resolves them into metaphysical comfort.
Poetry at The Arts Fuse
This week’s poem is José Antonio Ramos Sucre’s “The Truth”
Dance
At Jacob’s Pillow, Brinae Ali’s “Baby Laurence Legacy Project” reanimates a jazz tap master’s bebop musical brilliance through choreography, live music, and technology.
Theater
Double Edge Theatre revives its 2015 roaming spectacle of ecological grief, political resistance, and communal art.
Television
HBO’s docuseries on the illegal reptile trade is less wild than its predecessors, but its sorrowful, criminal undertow makes it unsettling in a different way.
Podcasts
Guest host Jessica Khan talks to DJ and broadcaster Kwame Daniels about his immersive live musical performance, “North Star.”
Short Fuses
Spotlight
Few things more clearly attest to the endurance of the human spirit and the drive for creativity than the uninterrupted and unstoppable torrent of brilliant new jazz albums we’ve already seen this year.
About the Arts Fuse
The Arts Fuse was established in June, 2007 as a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries. The publication's over 70 freelance critics (many of them with decades of experience) cover dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts. Support arts coverage that believes that culture matters.
August Short Fuses — Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.