Culture Hunter
This blog was originally published in the Huffington Post. As the seismic repercussions of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump start to reveal themselves, a new imperative for the art world emerges. The referendum and US presidential election reduced a set of complex, interlocking problems into a simple binary decision - the status quo [...]
In my recent blog, The Oscars, Othello and Ira Aldrige: The Paradox of Race in the Performing Arts, I reflected on the many ironies that underpin the casting of black actors (or lack thereof). Within that discussion, I queried the responsibility of white writers to develop characters and storylines that reflect the diversity of the societies in [...]
Whether you believe racism, a lack of good performances, or bad luck is the reason why no black actors were nominated for the Academy Awards this year, the #OscarsSoWhite campaign has reignited the discussion about diversity in the arts. Coincidentally, I recently saw the play Red Velvet (now showing at the Garrick Theatre in London’s [...]
For some reason, Somerset House is not a place I go for evening or weekend fun. This is my loss, as the venue has greatly expanded its public offer over the past 10 years. It sits on the Thames across from the Southbank Centre and National Theatre, but does not compare in terms of footfall. It now has [...]
Those who are reasonably well informed know that Raqqa (also known as Al-Raqqah, Rakka, Ar-Raqqah) is the city in Syria that is the ISIS stronghold and focus of Western forces’ air strikes. It currently holds immense symbolic power – a successful military campaign in Raqqa would be a major defeat for the Islamic State. But [...]
This video presents highlights from Schauwerk Sindelfingen, an art gallery I discovered recently while traveling in south Germany.
As a cultural professional working in a research-intensive university, I’m keenly interested in the interplay between arts and sciences: How can artistic creativity inspire scientific problem solving? How can we use art to articulate scientific principles and discoveries? How can scientific techniques inform new modes are artistic representation? How do we balance the abstract with [...]
