Tag: Arts & Tradition

IN-DEPTH: Imagine If John Lennon Had Lived Past 1980

There is a scene from the 2019 film “Yesterday” where protagonist Jack is overcome with joy at seeing a former Beatle member alive and well in a seaside cottage. Modern music history is replete with such “what ifs.” What if The Beatles had never broken up? What if John Lennon was not gunned down in…


Know Any Joans? May 30 Is Your Day

If one hopes to one day join the ranks of the saints in heaven, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to get to know a few more of them first. While I wasn’t raised Catholic by any means (I’m the daughter of a pastor), I have realized that the world of saints is a truly rich and…


Paradise Lost?

Have you ever looked around and thought to yourself that there’s so much evil that it seems like there’s hell on earth? It seems like violence, lust, anger, dishonesty, and discord have become the norm. Or has it? Is there still positivity among us despite the steady stream of negativity? In the last part of…


Michelangelo’s Baroque Rival: The Moving Sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

If artists as brilliant as Michelangelo and artworks as definitive as his “David” are rare, the year marking the 120th anniversary of that sculpture’s unveiling saw an event almost unparalleled in artistic history. For the first and maybe the last time, there was an artist who could rival Michelangelo both as a sculptor and a…


5,000 Australians Expected in ‘Nutbush’ World Record Attempt to Honour Tina Turner

In potentially Australia’s biggest tribute to Tina Turner, who passed away on May 24, Australians are preparing to set a new world record for the most people dancing the Nutbush, a line dance based on the semi-autobiographical song of the American-born singer. Music festival organisers are hoping to reach 5,000 dancers on July 6 this…


The Emotional Paintings of Hugo van der Goes

The exhibition “Hugo van der Goes: Between Bliss and Pain” at Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie gathers most of the artist’s surviving paintings and drawings for the first time since Hugo van der Goes’s death 540 years ago. This exhibit is an outstanding feat due to the rarity of surviving works, as well as their frequently large format….


There Is No Beauty in Bureaucracy

Commentary One of the great problems that we have here in Australia is that within our arts institutions, artistic decisions are increasingly being made not by artists but by administrators. Take, for example, the symphony orchestra. Where a conductor once largely curated his own artistic affairs, an “artistic planning team” of three to four bureaucrats,…


Theater Review: ‘You’re Perfect, I Love You, Now Change’: Nostalgic Musical of Couples in Love

GLENVIEW, IL—Although times were different when “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” first opened in 1996 Off-Broadway, and the dating game it depicted has since changed, romance is still very much the same. As the musical, now playing at the Oil Lamp Theater in Glenview, Illinois, demonstrates, love is timeless, still very funny, and…


Treasures From the Past: Our Libraries, Public and Private

Whether it’s a special trip to the Library of Congress or a 10-minute drive to the local library, when true lovers of books hear the words “Let’s head for the library,” they experience the same stab of excitement produced by the words “ice cream parlor” in a 5-year-old. For bibliophiles, the Magic Kingdom isn’t in…


The American Exploring Expedition That Changed How We See the World

The 19th century was the Age of American Expansion. Twenty years after signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, America signed the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the new nation. A year later, the Lewis and Clark Expedition began. Thirty years after this expedition, a journalist and explorer by the name of J. N….