Spotlight
Our financial establishment is being hijacked in a car driven by a greedy, vengeful man, his industry cronies and a doormat Congress cowering meekly in the back seat.
Perhaps asking that Judy Chicago’s exhibition not come was a necessary strategy in the short term, to help end Israeli brutality. But the lesson her show teaches us is necessary in the long term, so that Israelis will stop glorifying that very same brutality.
Raise a glass to Lenny Bruce, champion for—and martyr to—Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech. October 13, 2025, is the hundredth anniversary of his birth in Mineola, New York.
Now is a time for artists and arts organizations to stand shoulder to shoulder with other fields and disciplines that produce care in our communities.
My hunch is that not only theater critics but audiences will find the parade of tried and true tiresome.
“A play is political if its subject is taboo and its story mirrors, exposes, and critiques the suppression and repression that interferes with the treatment of a cultural disease. A political play is a problem that is ignored, denied, maligned. A political play is, by definition, unpopular.”
The question before arts organizations and companies is the same one that looms over the rest of us: will they—can they—act before it’s too late?
Abolishing cultural infrastructure and the deregulation of emerging technologies are two sides of the same anti-intellectual coin.
Back in February of 2024 I began to write a weekly column for AF newsletter on Substack. A few readers have asked that I post these opinion pieces in the magazine. Here is a selection of my favorites of 2025
Cultural Commentary: France Marks the 10th Anniversary of the Bataclan Attacks
The aftermath of a terrorist act becomes an opportunistic event for those selling us a certain bill of partisan geo-political goods… while simultaneously diminishing our latitude as citizens.
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