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.
The Arts Fuse Currents
Music
In “Silent Depths,” Kristian Sensini responds to the suffering of civilians in the West Bank and Gaza with sincere, accessible music that ultimately needs greater tension and complexity.
Visual Arts
In a revised study of the celebrated sixteenth-century painter, Michael W. Cole traces how family support, artistic training, and scholarly revision shaped her legacy.
Film
Orlando von Einsiedel’s documentary follows an Indian portrait artist’s extraordinary bicycle journey from Delhi to Sweden—and the improbable love story that inspired it.
Books
A new annotated translation of “Past & Thoughts” restores the Russian revolutionary writer’s intimate family drama and brings his penetrating critique of tyranny, populism, and political extremism to American readers.
Poetry at The Arts Fuse
This week’s poem: Zachary Bos’s “Sonnet Nearly Forty-Five”
Dance
Animated calligraphy, dancers in half-shadow, and two industrial robots create an eerie, elegant theater of marks, motions, and metallic afterimages at Jacob’s Pillow.
Theater
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
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Spotlight
This book is the best travelogue you’ll ever read about a terrible place you’ll never want to visit but want to experience vicariously.
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.
Performing Arts Feature: Huzzah! Renaissance Faires as Immersive Theater
King Richard’s Faire, which is New England’s largest and oldest medieval-themed entertainment venue, serves as an intriguing case study of countercultural expression and commercialized theatrical spectacle.