Can Asia Weather the Storm of the Global Financial Crisis?
In light of the current financial crisis, Asia’s economy is suffering too. Haruhiko Kuroda, Asian Development Bank President, discusses Asia’s economic development in light of the current financial crisis, fluctuations in commodity prices, and the environmental challenges that the region currently faces. Prior to his appointment as President of the Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda [...]
Martin Ramirez: The Archive and The Repertoire
Martin Ramirez (1895 – 1963) created hundreds of drawings of remarkable visual clarity and expressive power within the confines of DeWitt State Hospital in northern California, where he resided the last 15 years of his life. Ramirez had been codified primarily as a “schizophrenic artist,” but the American Folk Art Museum exhibition goes beyond the [...]
Housing New Yorkers in the 21st-Century
Urban visionary and activist Jane Jacobs wrote that a strong sense of community is critical in creating dynamic and diverse neighborhoods. But today, it is increasingly difficult for New Yorkers of low and moderate income to live here. In the midst of these precarious economic times, how can planners, architects, city officials, and developers work [...]
Salvaging the Wreckage: What’s Next Globally?
The slump in the United States housing market has become a synchronized global downturn. The world economy is headed for its worst year in more than a quarter century. With governments committing more than $3 trillion to rescuing banks and protecting depositors, the fall-out still continues to spread. Leo Abruzzese, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Editorial [...]
Alluring Androids and Robots in Film, Photography and Art
Filmmakers, photographers, and artists have long been fascinated by the idea of artificial women that seem alive. The Stepford Wives, Lara Croft, the latest in Japanese female robots look so real they can easily fool the eye. Professor Julie Wosk of State University of New York, Maritime College, showcases colorful images of female robots, androids, [...]
Salvaging the Wreckage: What’s Next for New York?
Some might argue that the global financial crisis started in New York. But whether the heart of the problem is on Main Street or on Wall Street, it is clear that the heart of the New York economy, the financial industry, has changed forever. Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s global economics editor, hosts a conversation [...]
Wicked, the Broadway smash musical and winner of 20 major awards, including a Grammy Award and three Tony Awards, is based on the bestselling novel by Gregory Maguire about two witches in the Land of Oz. Bookwriter Winnie Holzman, composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz, and producer David Stone, will discuss the process of adapting the novel to [...]
Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East
Kingmakers is the story of how the modern Middle East came to be, told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it. Some are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell); others infamous (Harry St. John Philby, father of Kim); some forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes, Israel’s godfather, and A. T. Wilson, the [...]
Sidney Lumet in Conversation with Neal Gabler
Sidney Lumet is a master of cinema and was awarded the Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2005. Long Day’s Journey into Night, Serpico, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Pawn Broker are just a handful of films on his resume. Dog Day Afternoon (1975), a complex masterpiece about a bungled bank robbery in New York [...]
The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too
While liberals continue to believe in the free market, conservatives have abandoned it all together. If conservatives no longer take free markets seriously, why should liberals? Why keep liberal thought in the straitjacket of pay-as-you-go, of assigning inflation control to the Federal Reserve, of attempting to “make markets work”? Why not build a new economic [...]
