Jerry Schoenfeld, the chairman of the Shubert Organization died suddenly early this morning.

I can hardly catch my breath. They may dim the lights on Broadway, but they will never be able to dim my memory of the twinkle in Jerry's eye.

Jerry was one of the legends of...

It's not too soon to start to look for markers that change is not only coming to Washington and politics but to the arts.

They say that artists and designers channel the zeitgeist better than the rest of us, that even if they are not actively talking with each other,...

All over the country, people are trying to figure out how to get out of bed now that BHO has been elected. (Have you noticed: since Obama was elected, people are very free with his middle name?!)

One friend of mine, a distinguished PhD in psychology who teaches people how...

In 1961, New Rochelle, New York was the site of the North's first court-ordered desegregation when Judge Irving R. Kaufman of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered the 94 percent black Lincoln Elementary school which was at the other end of my town, closed. After two years of racial tension,...

I have spent every last free second in the run up to Tuesday on the phone for Barack. Well, you couldn't really avoid it: six or eight times a day, you would get a message from someone at HQ (it was always a different name), urging you, rather...

The phone and I have always had a complicated relationship. There was a time when I liked it: my fondest memories are of the white Princess phone. (For those of you too young to know what that was, here is a picture.)

This was...

I have been trying to educate myself about Wall Street so I could have intelligent conversations with the men in my life.

This has not been as easy as it sounds.

If you are like me, you have been doing a lot of head scratching lately, trying to keep...

Within a ten block span of Manhattan right now, the early work of three very different, but fiercely original iconic artists of the twentieth century is on display: sometimes we get lucky.

Though two of the three men worked in Paris (Calder and Picasso) and the third not far away...

Energy of all kinds is on everyone's mind.

Nuclear energy, once the scourge of any right-thinking person who had lived through Three Mile Island and Chernobyl has not-so-suddenly become something Americans need to revisit if we are to tackle our energy problems in a holistic, modern, fashion.

The French...

Elizabeth Peyton is 43 years old and she is already having a major museum retrospective at the chic newly built New Museum on the lower east side of Manhattan.

They are a very good fit for each other.

Photo by Dean Kaufman

This...

I always knew Jonathan Demme was wonderful with actresses and understood female characters, beginning with Mary Steenburgen's quirky Oscar winning role in Melvin and Howard, continuing certainly with Jodie Foster's Clarissa in his most famous film, The Silence of the Lambs, but even in his later, more commercial and to...

Do you remember in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the best one, with Kevin McCarthy) when they open the trunk of the car and you get your first glimpse of the pods? And then when you actually see one oozing and growing in the closet overnight?

That's how I...

In 1973, when Equus, the highly dramatic play by Peter Shaffer first appeared, it caused all kinds of chatter. In the early seventies, we were still seekers and Equus delved into the nature of passion versus the humdrum and asked the question: isn't it better to be driven and mad...

What is the role of the musician in these troubled times? There are fantastic talents in all branches of music and it should be enough just to receive their gifts of composition, shouldn't it?

Well, no. Like any artists, when the world is going to hell in hand basket and...

When I was growing up in and around New York, the Huntington Hartford Museum was already an iconic eyesore at Columbus Circle. Lincoln Center, just up the block, was not considered too much better, I might add, for a world that had become used to the graciousness of Carnegie...

Mayor Bloomberg is multi-tasking just like me (he has better transportation) plus he is on the phone with his posse trying to fix the financial markets. Since I get breathless at the thought of an algebra equation, and quants and derivatives even as vocabulary words daunt me, I will leave...

If you are 27 years old and you've tried and already shed a couple of careers, can you transform yourself into a world class artist?

Can you paint in the dark?

Can you paint not only what you see but what you remember?

Can you use painting as...

It seemed only fitting that tonight was the sober, majestic performance of Verdi's Requiem in honor of Luciano Pavarotti at the Metropolitan Opera.

At the end of a long day of continued substantial turmoil in the financial markets...

Last week I was sent a list that was supposedly the list of books that Sarah Palin asked be banned from her local Wasilla library.

I have been fretting over it ever since.

As readers of the Culture Zohn know, censorship is an abiding concern of mine; last year...

The Fly is a movie that you either loved or hated. Jeff Goldblum is an actor who either sends you and whom you think is lanky and sexy and soulful or gives you the creeps with his eyes that pop....