Featured Blog Posts (66)

Is it possible to find inner peace in a place as tumultuous as Times Square? Artist Josefina Baez will help you answer that question this summer on a creative walk.  Join Josefina and others as we attempt to find balance at one of the world's most bustling intersections.  Buy your tickets here!…

I filmed this song with Siobhan at one of her favorite places in New York.  Black Bear Brooklyn is a vintage store in Prospect Heights where she felt right at home singing her heart out.

According to this New York Times article, the hugely popular exhibition, "Arts in the Street", at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in…

I caught up for a New York minute with musician, composer and producer (and Guggenheim fellow!) Cristian Amigo at the Travers Park playground in our neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens, on a cold day in April 2011... check out the video to find out what Cristian would do if he was mayor of New York!

This wonderful project by Alexander Chen, www.mta.me, has been my soundtrack all day. The artist explains the project as such: "at …

Longtime Culturalista Matt Jones has a new CD out called "The Devil's in This Whiskey" with his new project, Brooklyn's Two Cent Revival. The album mixes "folk-tinged Americana and classic country elements…

In this "A Minute With...." segment, we filmed the founder of Graffiti Tours New York in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick.  Visit Gabe's site to experience the tour yourself and watch this video to learn more about Gabe.

Holi is a festival of great importance for Hindus. On this day, year after year, we celebrate the triumph of good over evil. According to legend, Holika was invited by Hiranyakashipu, the devil, to get rid of his son, Prahlad, who was a true Vishnu devotee. HIranyakahipu ordered Holika to burn Prahlad. She took the young boy and sat on a burning pyre, but fortunately, she was burnt to ashes, and Vishnu saved Prahlad. Hindus worship Vishnu on this day and welcome the onset of…

In "A Minute With..." we catch up for a New York minute with artists and cultural workers in New York City to see what they are up to and what they love about the city. In the first of the series, I caught up with Aaron Friedman, Founder and President of the wildly successful…

If you are a fan of dance you will want to check out the archives of Jacob's Pillow Dance, America's longest running international dance festival.  My personal favorite is a video of…

For anyone who has lived in or visited LA, the idea of a neighborhood art walk is a little bizzare-- (unless you can valet-park your car on the way there!). The historic neighborhood of Leimert Park, which John Singleton (Boys n the Hood) once called the "black Greenwich Village", has nevertheless succeeded in getting huge amounts of people to its new art walks, meant as a way to preserve and revitalize this historic neighborhood. In this video, the organizers asked the art walkers…

I spent some time on The Municipal Art Society of New York's website today and noticed they offered some really interesting walking tours.  Here's a sample:

When Brooklyn Met the Middle East

This is a tour of Brooklyn’s earliest Arab-American…

My lips came with a caravan of slaves

That belonged to the Grand Sanussi.

In Al-Jaghbub he freed them.

They still live in the poor section of Benghazi

Near the hospital where I was born.

This is the first stanza from Khaled Mattawa's poem "History of My Face."  Give the current state of affairs in Libya, I…

You Are Now The Owner of This Suitcase is the second installment in a trilogy of plays produced by Theatre 167, currently playing at PS 69 in Jackson Heights, Queens until April 3, 2011. I had chanced upon the first production, 167 Tongues, last year (which I blogged about here) and had been looking forward to the next chapter with…

WNYC's Julia Furlan reports on a story that has been gathering pace and that the Guggenheim would like to see go away:  "There may be a few key art works missing from the Guggenheim's collection in Abu Dhabi. More than 130 artists have signed onto a petition boycotting the Guggenheim's new Saadiyat Island museum over alleged unfair working conditions for migrant workers building the project."…

Chris Gill tells the story in The Art Newspaper of 30 artists in Shanghai who are being evicted of the building that houses their art studio (is Shanghai the new Manhattan?!). They are not leaving without a fight though.…