As the age of Covid-19 finally wanes, Arts Fuse critics supply a guide to film, dance, visual art, theater, author readings, and music. Please check with venues when uncertain whether the event is available by streaming or is in person. More offerings will be added as they come in.
Main Content
Latest in Visual Arts
Visual Arts Review: BarabásiLab — Where Art and Technology Meet, Beautifully
This BarabásiLab exhibition is inspiring because it exemplifies a powerful integration of art and technology.
Latest in Music
Album Review: Omar Apollo’s “Ivory” — Making Good on His Promise
Ivory is at its best when Omar Apollo fully commits to taking adventures into different sonic spaces.
Latest in Dance
Dance Review: “The Just and the Blind” — Shackled, Humiliated, Scared
The Just and the Blind sends a needed and powerful message — it is 2022, we need to wake up!
Latest in Television
Television Review: “Senior Year” — A Mindless Trip Down Memory Lane
Like the films of the 2000s, Senior Year is filled with chuckles but eschews substance.
Latest Short Fuses
May Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Latest Podcast
Short Fuse Podcast #53: Gwendolyn Brooks — A Poet’s Work in the Community
Nic Caldwell talks with Elizabeth Howard about poet Gwendolyn Brooks, her work, and the recent acquisition of her personal papers for the Morgan Library and Museum collection and the exhibition he curated.
Latest in Books
Book Review: “The Poetics of Cruising” — Imaginative Acts of Capture
By exploring the historical and artistic significance of cruising throughout poetry, photography, and visual culture, the book produces a rich and exciting topography of queer culture that posits a reflexive relationship of vicarious cruising between “cruising texts” and their consumers.
Latest in Theater
Theater Review: “Sea Sick” — How Damned Is the Ocean?
Personable but bracing, Sea Sick delivers an essential message: not only about the damage that is being done to the oceans, but the horrors that are coming down the pike.
Latest in Film
Film Review: Dennis Hopper’s “Out of the Blue” — Still a Stunner
A welcome homecoming for a new 4K digital restoration of a landmark independent film that’s attained cult status.
Latest in Food
Book Review: The Lost Southern Chefs — A History of the Commercialization of Southern Hospitality
For all of the book’s fascinating revelations, The Lost Southern Chefs leaves the reader with a number of unanswered questions.
Read the Latest
Classical Music Review: Osvaldo Golijov’s “Nazareno”
Nazareno is bright, often joyous, and easy on the ears. That ought to count for something.
Classical Album Review: Violinist Lea Birringer plays Sinding and Mendelssohn
Violinist Lea Birringer’s performance of the Christian Sinding selections are impressive. Her Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, though, is missing drive, excitement, and passion.
Film Review: “The Automat” — A Documentary Love-In to the Restaurant Chain
What could have been a fantastic twenty-minute short becomes a tedious slog as a stretched-out feature.
Book Review: Europe’s African Loot
Africa’s Struggle for Its Art usefully charts the prequel to current campaigns pressuring for the return of colonial plunder.
Book Excerpt: Helen Epstein’s “Getting Through It: My Year of Cancer During Covid”
Just after Covid arrived in North America, journalist Helen Epstein was diagnosed with endometrial cancer — one of a predicted 66,570 new cases of cancer of the uterine body in the United States in 2021.