The Arts in New York City

The Phantom of the Opera is a marvelous play shown at the Majestic Theater in the Broadway Box.  This show has been the longest running show in Broadway history.  I watched the movie before and since I enjoyed it very much, I decided to see the play itself.  I heard from others that the show was even more beautiful than the movie, and after watching the play, I see that they stand correct.  The show is astounding and amazing to see.  A large part of this opinion comes from the fact that the actors are right in front of you, unlike in the movie where the actors filmed it on some Hollywood set.  Broadway shows, such as The Phantom of the Opera, are wonderful due to the audience’s feel of the actors’ true feelings while acting the play. Read the rest of this entry »

        The most common medium for art and communication, in this day and age, is mass media. Media in the form of newspapers, television, and films might be considered by some elitist artists as far too commercial to be real art. However, there are some forms of media that can be artistic in nature and form. One such form is the documentary. Documentaries are artistic in the way that it tells a story, expresses the feelings and sentiments of its subjects and the filmmaker, and informs people.

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There are dozens of magazines devoted to fashion; Elle, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, just to name a few. Each magazine is filled back-to-back with advertisements displaying gorgeous people in gorgeous outfits. To me, the garments that covered these people were just clothes, not art. That was why I was a little bit surprised when my friend attending the Fashion Institute of Technology asked if I would like to go visit the museum at her school. Read the rest of this entry »

Not knowing what to expect from my visit to the Museum of Natural History made my experience very peculiar. I was actually uncertain on whether I was going to find some form of art at the museum or not, since I have not been there for the last three years, and I barely recollect anything from my past visits. However, I decided to go for it since I had nothing to lose, except for some time. As I went from one floor of the museum into another, I realized that I had uncovered a unique form of art – one in which realism, created out of artificial objects and materials, is highly appreciated. Read the rest of this entry »

I will admit that although I love watching plays and Broadway shows, I do not get too excited about the newer, or more unknown shows. If given the choice between a popular Broadway show such as “Wicked”, or a less popular one called, “The Farnsworth Invention”, I would shyly prefer to see the first. It also upsets me when a performance doesn’t contain any music or songs because I feel that music plays a large part in telling the story of most Broadway shows. However, I was proven very wrong this past weekend after seeing a less popular Broadway show called the “Farnsworth Invention”. A friend of mine surprised me with tickets to this performance and after telling me its title, I wasn’t too eager to watch it. However, during the show I quickly learned that just because it wasn’t advertised on subways and buses everywhere and just because it wasn’t a musical, doesn’t mean that “The Farnsworth Invention” was an amateur show to be taken lightly. This performance exceeded my expectations and has motivated me to check out other Broadway and off- Broadway shows that are not so common on the streets. Read the rest of this entry »

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Hungry for new art? Then Performa 07, the performance biennial that kicks off this week (see performa-arts.org for details), has a dish for you! Every day at lunchtime from 11 am to 4 pm, Oct. 27-Nov. 20, 2007 Freeman’s restaurant on Freeman Alley in SoHo is serving an experimental culinary work by Turkish conceptual artist Serkan Özkaya’s (b. 1973). Dubbed Bring Me the Head of. . . , the work is a ginger spice cake with bourbon, caramel and cream (created by Freeman’s chef Jean Adamson) that can be yours for the bargain price of $10. Art appreciation here is via the taste buds, as restaurant patrons are “invited to consume and thereby destroy the art.” Özkaya concept requires that the dish take the shape of “a head of an icon of childhood,” and in this manifestation the model is Caravaggio’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (ca. 1609).

(Lu – this one’s for you!)

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Searching for an event that would make up for the Sigrid Nunez Reading at the Newman Conference Center at Baruch on Tuesday, I quickly realized that I had not look too far. Macaulay’s common events can actually be very beneficial besides contradictory observations many students had made after the first event. I was lucky to have met a guy that over the last two months has become a dear friend of mine: Sean.
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Conversation with Eric Krebs, Theatrical Producer

Wednesday Oct. 24 at 3pm at the 45 St. Theater
354 W. 45 St., just east of 9th Ave. on the south side
(Closest subway is the A/C/E at 42 St. and 8th Ave. From there it’s 3 blocks north and 1 block west.)

More info on Eric Krebs