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British media star Jeremy Carson is best known for hit shows like Top Gear and Grand Tour. He is also a best selling author. He has sunk a ton of loot and life savings into a thousand acre Diddly Squat Farm in Britain's bucolic Cotswold. His pratfalls, bone headed decisions, and mishegoss are the plot line for the hit series Carson's Farm now in its second season on Amazon Prime.

In 2022 the Guggenheim acquired over 60 works by more than 40 artists, of whom 75% are new to its collection. The works span from the 1960s to the present day and augment the museum’s holdings of some of the world’s most influential artists.

Broadway Licensing is pleased to announce its acquisition of the highly-anticipated play, “John Proctor Is the Villain” by playwright Kimberly Belflower for live stage performance rights. In conjunction, The Huntington, Boston’s leading professional theatre, is thrilled to publicize that it will include the thought-provoking, funny new play in its 23/24 season.  

Let’s admit that the play has some resemblances to Death of a Salesman. Irving is a traveling salesman gone weeks at time, just as Willie Loman was.  He is also a flawed man. His relationship with his son is contentious.  Like Linda in the Miller play, his wife is loyal to him but aware of the realities he can’t quite admit and tries to keep the peace between him and Larry.

Welcome spring with a double header exhibition by Stephanie Boyd and Jane Hudson at Spring Street Market and Cafe in Williamstown. It will be on view from April 1 through June 17.

Greta Oglesby gloriously reprises the role of Fannie Lou Hamer that she performed at Oregon Shakes’ vast outdoor Elizabethan Theatre.  She brings a speaking voice brimming with passion and conviction, as well as a strong and melodious singing voice.  She stalks the stage with a slight hobble as a wounded warrior who is too busy planning the next demonstration to let her nagging injuries slow her down.

Friends have asked for reports about our Antarctic cruise. I have broken it into categories for picking and choosing. It was a 9-day journey on Atlas Ocean Voyages, a new luxury brand, on the World Navigator. We had previously decided to give the Antarctic a miss because of the potential misery of four days on the Drake Passage. Then we learned of "Fly the Drake" (i.e., launching the cruise from South Georgia Island rather than Argentina or Chile) and became interested.

Larence Brownlee tours with Rising, a program of songs based on poems of the Harlem Renaissance and music by composers of color. He is at Carnegie Hall on March 23rd.

Maltz Jupiter Theatre triumphs with its production of the infrequently produced musical, "Oliver!" This production is the company's largest yet. Maltz's production runs through April 2.

FreshGrass, MASS MoCA’s annual three-day festival of bluegrass and roots music, announces the initial 2023 lineup, featuring Dropkick Murphys Acoustic—playing songs from their two albums with the lyrics of Woody Guthrie - plus acoustic arrangements of all your DKM favorites—Lukas Nelson + POTR, Sierra Ferrell, Rhiannon Giddens...

Lawrence Brownlee came to Carnegie Hall to present a program he has developed called Rising.  In the second part of his show, Jasmine Barnes, Branson Spencer, Damien Sneed, Shawn Okpebholo, and Joel Thompson, young up-and-coming composers, set poems to their music.  Carlos Simon offered vocalese

Send-ups can be tricky, since pastiche, and particularly farce, can wear thin. But “Ruthless! The Musical” pushes all the right buttons, offering a bright script and bouncy music with clever and provocative lyrics. Altarena Playhouse gives it a rousing rendition that is enjoyable from start to finish. The casting and acting are superb, and the creative elements sparkle.

The producers of Art Bath, who dance together at the Metropolitan Opera, are warm individuals who make inspired selections for programs that range from conventional songs accompanied by live, drawn art to wild Moroccan sintir music which inspires accompanying clapping and ululation in joy. 

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has announced the six finalists for the 2023 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award. ATCA presents the honor annually. The presentation will take place on May 7 at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif as part of the annual Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Noche Flamenca creates a diverse theatrical body of performance through song, music, and dance that expresses a rigorous, spell-binding aesthetic in the form of flamenco; one that exceeds the highest artistic expectations.

The Clark Art Institute recently added three new paintings to its permanent collection, enhancing its holdings of works by women artists. The paintings, two by Marguerite Gérard and one by Evelyn De Morgan, are the first by either artist to enter the Clark’s collection.

The Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation, in collaboration with the Department of Canadian Heritage and Culture pour tous, is proud to announce the Canadian artists who have been selected to realize 9 cultural mediation projects as part of the Riopelle Dialogues Program, one of the most ambitious cultural mediation programs ever seen in Canada.

Composer Allen Shearer and librettist Claudia Stevens's “Prospero’s Island” borrows from the “The Tempest.” But they have moved it a significant measure from the source material. In addition to lyrics in modern American-English vernacular interspersed with poetic accents, a plot update and revision gives the material more contemporary relevance while altering the moral profile of the main character. The result is a riveting chronicle of moral corruption followed by a quest for redemption that is accompanied by equally compelling music, calling on diverse idioms. Although the narrative arc is clearly dramatic, the creators frequently punctuate the proceedings with humorous interludes.

Born to immigrant parents, Iranian-American playwright Sanaz Toossi looks at a part of a global industry that has derived from the ubiquitous nature of English – teaching English to non-native speakers.  Calling upon her own heritage to generate a narrative, her incisive dramedy “English” won both the Lucille Lortel and Obie awards for best new play in 2022.

Richard Strauss preferred to spell the title of his most popular opera: Der Rosencavalier.  Although the opera began with conversations between librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Count Kessler, a diplomat, scholar and director of the Cranach-Presse in Weimar, the opera is very much Strauss’s.  Kessler promised Hofmannsthal that he could pay for his children’s education with the proceeds from productions.  That he did. 

Announcing the opening of my artist-in-residence exhibition at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies at UMass, Amherst.

In 1923 Edward Hopper spent his second summer in Gloucester. He met and later married the artist Josephine Nivison. That summer he painted several pictures and created a number of water colors. They worked side by side. A century later, on the occasion of Gloucester 400 Plus their work will be on view at the Cape Ann Museum.

Passages in American Art is a fundamental reinterpretation of the collection, platforming multiple voices, revealing new ways of looking at some of the museum’s most beloved works of art, and inviting community members to drive the conversation. Opening May 27, 2023, the project examines the existing collection, and along with recent acquisitions, commissions, and select long-term loans, integrates Atlantic narratives and Indigenous perspectives to expand the story of American art. 

The Huntington announces its complete lineup for the 23/24 season, featuring an eclectic mix of 7 highly acclaimed shows by a wide variety of diverse artists, the first full season completely programmed by new Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco. 

Endgame livestreamed from the Irish Rep. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame enjoyed a must-see run at the Irish Repertory Theatre.  Starring Bill Irwin, the clown and Beckett aficionado, as Clov and John Douglas Thompson as Hamm, here uncharacteristically for Thompson, the “insider.”  He is bound to a wheelchair, blind and dependent on painkillers, yet the clear force of the moment. Clov lurches around him