PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture 4 Artists Withdraw From The Whitney Biennial Over Controversial Board Member
Four artists have requested the removal of their work from the Whitney Biennial – a historic and often career-making exhibition of contemporary art – citing their objection to military and police hardware entrepreneur Warren B. Kanders’s position as one of the five vice chairs of the Whitney Museum’s board. “We respectfully ask you to withdraw…
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Culture Could The ‘Cats’ Movie Design Be Inspired By Chagall’s Creepy Kittens?
To paraphrase the blockbuster musical “Cats,” Jellicles can and Jellicles do. But should they have? A trailer for “Cats” the movie, director Tom Hooper’s latest cinematic vivisection of a popular musical, was unleashed upon an innocent public July 18. It is notable for its familiar Andrew Lloyd Webber score, A-List talent and its Doctor Moreau-esque…
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Theater Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor And Yiddish Theater Scion, To Receive Kennedy Center Honor
The Kennedy Center Honors announced July 18 that it would recognize a member of Yiddish Theater royalty. Michael Tilson Thomas, the longtime music director of the San Francisco Symphony and an 11-time Grammy winner, will receive the prestigious award at a ceremony to be broadcast December 15. Thomas is a veteran maestro, pianist and composer…
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Culture Seth And Mark Rogen To Be Honored At Workmen’s Circle Benefit
This year’s Workmen’s Circle benefit will be a father-son affair. On July 18, the Workmen’s Circle, the historic Jewish social justice group, announced it would be honoring non-profit professional Mark Rogen and his son, actor Seth Rogen, with the organization’s Generation to Generation Activism Award. “From the moment we met Mark and Seth Rogen, we…
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Culture Louvre Becomes First Museum To Remove Sackler Name Amid Opioid Lawsuits
The Louvre Museum in Paris took a bold step in an ongoing art world controversy by removing the name of the Sackler family from a gallery that members of the family, the majority owners of Purdue Pharma, helped to fund. The Louvre is the first major museum to make such a move. The Sacklers have…
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Culture Remembering Else Ury, Famed Children’s Writer And Victim Of The Holocaust
Among the books outlawed by the Nazis were the widely-read children’s books of Else Ury. The Third Reich ended Ury’s career as part of their purge of “degenerate” art, and within seven years of that censorship she was killed at Auschwitz. But Ury’s beloved character Annemarie Braun, known as “Nesthäkchen,” a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman…
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Culture In ‘Shangri-La’ Rick Rubin’s Genius Gets A Spiritual Shrug
For over three decades, Rick Rubin has been a fabled figure in popular music – and he looks the part. Coiffed like a Stoic philosopher or a traditional representation of the Judeo-Christian god with a nimbus of wispy hair and a chest-length beard, eyes often shielded behind sunglasses, Rubin presents a legendary character: a Jewish…
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Culture Michael Seidenberg, Who Ran New York’s Most Remarkable Secret Bookstore, Dies At 64
Michael Seidenberg, the affable, bearded bookseller who launched a secret literary salon in his Upper East Side apartment, died July 8 at a hospital in Danbury, Connecticut. He was 64. His widow, Nicky Roe, told The New York Times that the cause of Seidenberg’s death was heart failure. Born in Brooklyn on July 22, 1954…
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