By the time it was gone, the change was subtle but unmistakable: one corner left without its figure, one pedestal left bare. But to understand why that absence matters, it helps to understand who Kate Chopin was and the stories she wrote.
I am not losing my faith. I am wondering where that religion truly is. Is this really the place where God Himself enters into physical form in our midst?
Recognition is complex, often mixed with merit, institutional needs, and fair randomness. If I produce something of value and receive no “gold medal,” I am no longer discouraged by not getting any recognition. I know the work I have done. I know the growth I have experienced.
When you walk into the Saint Louis Art Museum’s new exhibit—Ancient Splendor: Rome in the Time of Trajan—the emperor himself greets you. His right hand is raised, index finger lifted: he is about to speak. The commanding air comes naturally to him; he rose through the army, suffering hardship alongside…
In Elizabeth Finch, Julian Barnes’s character falls platonically in love with one of his teachers, a woman whose clarity and intelligence become his lodestar. After her death, he vows to overcome his habitual procrastination and research a historical figure he suspects she wanted him to write about. “To please the…
The new debut record by American Pirates of Bloomington, Indiana, “What a Friend,” artfully blends so many different kinds of folk music that it comes across as an anthology or a variety show, yet with kindred themes and a unifying sound.
I asked a friend which of two things she thought true: Are our lives narratives? Or are they many quick stories/events/incidents that pop up, one damn thing after another, which are tied together only by the meanings we assign?
Something dark and sharp must live deep inside me, because when I read “There Are No Psychopaths,” I am disappointed. Psychopaths explain so much. The twisted little smile that crosses someone’s face, quickly hidden, after they cause pain. The impulse, spreading fast these days, to watch the world burn.
When I asked for a curator at the Saint Louis Zoo who would educate me about animal communication, I was hoping for chatty, irreverent primates or soulful, wise elephants. Instead, I was sent to Dr. Ed Spevak, the zoo’s acclaimed curator of invertebrates. Brilliant, fired with enthusiasm for his subject…
There are films easily ruined by spoiler details, and then there are films that sound almost like a joke when spoilers are revealed. ‘Sirāt,’ whose title comes from the Arabic meaning “way,” or “path,” or the perilous connection between paradise and hell, is both.