The Met Museum’s exhibition, Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964, is like a primer on how to appreciate painting. It’s also the first comprehensive retrospective on the artist in this country, unbelievably. Morandi has a reputation as an artist’s artist, lionized by art students and scholars, but in the shadow of household name artists. This most likely would [...]

The talk in art circles may be about China these days, but the northern European scene isn’t doing too bad for itself either. Just this summer in New York, there’s “From Another Shore: Recent Icelandic Art” at Scandinavia House, “Arctic Hysteria: New Art from Finland” at P.S.1, and of course Denmark’s Olafur Eliasson is staging [...]

Poor Manon Lescaut: She just can’t get a break in Puccini’s opera of the same name. Fine, so she does not-so-clever things like waffling about getting her jewels when she should be rushing out to escape, but does it really warrant deportation to Louisiana with a bunch of harlots for company? And what about that [...]