Blog

Johann Christian Schröder’s “The Annunciation” (circa 1690) depicts Mary’s initially troubled reaction at the news from the angel Gabriel that she was to be the mother of the Son of God. Courtesy Slovenia’s Ptuj Ormož Regional Museum

Yielding -- and overcoming -- in a season of dark and light

December 22, 2024

Central to the feast of Christmas, which Christians —and let’s face it, many non-Christians — will celebrate Wednesday, Dec. 25, is the story of the angel Gabriel coming to the town of Nazareth to tell the Virgin Mary that she will miraculously conceive and bear Jesus, the Son of God.

Much has been written about Mary as the new, obedient Eve — the anti-Eve, as it were — acquiescing to become the mother of God, with all the suffering his Passion will entail for her as well as him. (Think Michelangelo’s poignant “Pièta.”) And just as much has been written about so-called sacrilegious interpretations of Mary doubting this calling, (see Netflix series “Mary”); and Jungian interpretations of Mary as yet another mother in the miraculous birth narratives of famous men (see the stories of the Buddha, Alexander the Great and Augustus).

All these interpretations miss the point of the original text.

Slaughter on Sixth Avenue: One of New York City’s ubiquitous security cameras captures the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brfan Thompson outside the New York Hilton in Manhattan Dec. 4.

State of denial: When a nation's moral compass is 'out of network'

December 8, 2024

By now we can assume that there are few people in the nation who are unaware of the Dec. 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — on his way to an investors’ conference at the New York Hilton in Manhattan — and few people who are unaware that feelings are running about nine to one in favor of the shooter.

Rafael Nadal at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, in 2013. *Photograph by* *Gilad Rom.*

Fab: The long twilight of tennis' 'Big Four'

November 25, 2024

“The truth is forced upon us, very quickly, by a foe,” the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote, and that was perhaps never truer than of tennis’ “Big Four” — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. They were, strictly speaking, not foes — which implies an element of enemies, along with cross and double-cross — but rather opponents and especially rivals in the glorious first three decades of this century, when they won 69 Slam titles and three of the last four gold medals in men’s singles at the Summer Olympics (Nadal in 2008, Murray in ’12 and ’16 and Djokovic this year).

People talk about Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz and their contrasting temperaments and talents — Apollonian ice versus Dionysian fire respectively — which may ultimately eclipse the four. But I predict that when the history of tennis is finished, fans will look back at the Big Four as the likes of which we never saw again.

Eugène Thirion’s “Joan of Arc Listening to the Voices” (1876, oil on canvas). Joan heeded the voices of St. Michael the Archangel, pictured with her here, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Margaret to rally the French against the British during the Hundred Years’ War of the Late Middle Ages. Burned as a heretic in 1431, she was canonized in 1920 and is revered today by the French, the Roman Catholic Church and feminists alike as a woman who remained true to her beliefs.

Transcending in the new Trump era

November 10, 2024

I’ve been thinking a lot about transcendence in sports and politics — two fields in which the quantitative and the qualitative collide.

J.W. Waterhouse’s “Echo and Narcissus” (1903, oil on canvas). Courtesy Walker Art Gallery. Narcissus falls in love with his reflection not because he has an inflated sense of self but because he has no strong, healthy core identity. These days, he is too much with us.

The 2024 presidential election and the irrational cult of narcissism

October 31, 2024

These days, everyone is making closing arguments — Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald J. Trump, comedian Jimmy Kimmel of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — as if we the people were we, the jury, which I suppose we are. I might as well make one as well.

A plaster cast of Eduardo Barrón's "Nero and Seneca" (1904). Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher and historian who tutored and advised the emperor Nero, had a lot to say about leading a meaningful life. His ended when the narcissistic Nero forced him to commit suicide. *Courtesy Museo del Prado.*

High profile leave-takings ask -- when and how to go?

October 13, 2024

Recently, The Museum of Modern Art director Glenn D. Lowry, a man I interviewed several times in my career as a cultural writer, announced that he will step down from his post after 30 years in September of 2025.

As much as his counterpart Philippe de Montebello at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, who left that post in 2008 after more than 30 years as its longest-serving director, Lowry really shaped the New York City cultural scene at the twilight of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st. He could’ve stayed on.

But he told The New York Times: “I didn’t want to be the person who stayed too long.”

In that, however, Lowry is a rare bird.

The gathering storms -- Hurricane Milton and the presidential election

October 8, 2024

As “A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes” by Eric Jay Dolin demonstrates, hurricanes in the United States have always been about two kinds of storms — meteorological and political.