American Gothic, arguably the best known and most iconic painting by an American artist, was created by Grant Wood when he was on the dole from the WPA. Artists had to pass in work to get their monthly checks. This painting was part of the inventiry when the relief program was shut down. It was given to the Art Institute of Chicage where it has deliughted viewers ever since.

Here is a cheat sheet of ranked museum exhibitions if you plan to be in NY for the holidays

Mozart's final opera was written in 18 days to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia. While it is often said that the opera is political, the hearts and minds of top political figures are central. It is hard to be evil. It is easier to be good if you have honest people around you. Simple, deep words are embedded in some of the most gorgeous music ever written. The Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater gives Mozart his full due.

A national equity tour of an acclaimed production of Sondheim's Into the Woods recently kicked off at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa and is on its way up north -- possibly to your city.

Sliding into the Holiday season followed by the dead of wintwr Mass MoCA is looking on the bright side. The North Adams based mega museum has posted a full schedule of enticing upcoming events. It's time to mark the calendar.

What started Off Broadway at Ars Nova, with three steps in between, has transferred to Broadway. Based on a 70 page slice of Tolstoy's War and Peace the explosively inovative Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 is the one to beat as best musical come awards season.

In the early days of television in the 1950s stations provided low budget filler by showing second rate B movies. The usual formula was to have a host, in this case a couple, who introduced the films and pitched products during breaks. This is the theme of Todd Michael's new play The Big Uncut Flick which is having an Off Broadway run.

Of course the costumes are terrific. Isaac Mizrahi, narrator and imaginer of this production, is a top flight designer. Each animal and human has a few eyecatching details. Prokofiev is always fabulous. All the elements come together in the Guggenheim's Works and Process Christmas celebration.

Nelson Algren was a star in Chicago’s bright literary firmament, but his light dimmed in the years after he won the 1950 National Book Award for The Man With the Golden Arm and acclaim for a few other works. A new biography by Mary Wisniewski explores Algren the man and Algren the writer and how one influenced the other.

Remy Bumppo uses Shaw’s original script but adds some mid-century touches and a new character—an older version of Eliza, named Elizabeth, personified by Jane deLaubenfels. Elizabeth appears at beginning, middle and end of the play to honor the memory of what took place in the boxed-up rooms that used to be Higgins’ “laboratory” on Wimpole Street.

During the Fall meeting of American Theatre Critics Association there was the traditional lunch wih the stars at Sardi's. Our correspoindent Sandy Katz was on hand to soak up the fun and files this spirited report.

Carbonell Award-winning actor Tom Wahl portrays the Lord in GableStage’s funny, engaging production of “An Act of God,” which is on-stage through Dec. 18 as the company’s first 2016-17 production.

If there is an argument for YouTube and the ever-expanding internet, it is made by this group of superb young musicians, classically-trained, impeccable artists who are open to anything.

Louis XIV was a great arts patron, but like most powerful men, he liked to be flattered. The two divertissements revived by the BEMF are sycophantic but charming to listen to and see. As usual, the BEMF forces excelled in a highly stylized production.

A twenty-five note chord indeed. But that’s how Detlov Glanert starts his composition Theatrum Bestiarum. The singing of a thousand birds, the howling of the storm, the lapping of waves and the crackling of the fire. We are in the midst of musical feeling at Carnegie Hall as Glanert crashes around us and Mahler follows. A thrilling evening of brass and drums.

The vast Khovsgol Lake region in northern Mongolia is home to numerous nomadic herders. As their grazing horses, yaks, and reindeer grace the shores, picturesque gers for locals and visitors add to the pastoral charm. Gobi Desert in the south fascinates with its valleys, sand dunes, ochre-colored cliffs, and the unique two-humped Bactrian camels.

First Night is the most affordable, accessible, family-friendly, safe and exciting way to spend New Year's Eve in the region. On Saturday, December 31st join over 15,000 revelers as Saratoga Art’s presents one of the oldest and largest First Night celebrations in the country. Starting with the 5k roadrace at Skidmore College at 5:30pm, culminating with fireworks in Congress Park at midnight and packed full of live music, dance, comedy and magic in between, this event will be a highlight of your outgoing year.

Conductor Iván Fischer led the New York Philharmonic in a startling program, not because Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major or Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony in G Major are unfamiliar. Yet they sounded particularly new and fresh in this performance. Fischer characteristically releases phrases in a swell and dares to experiment with dynamic extremes, particularly in the Beethoven, where both the soloist and the orchestra often whisper.

The holiday season comes early this year. From December 1 through 21, MASS MoCA opens its doors and waives admission to all Berkshire County residents. MASS MoCA hopes to welcome as many friends and neighbors as possible with its first-ever Free Berkshire County program.

A friend wrote of spending Thanksgiving in the kitchen and concern that I had passed mine contemplating the pending decline and fall of an American empire. The response set forth some concerns for the new era of social and political commentary. The end is near and starts now.

"Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Art" by author Judith E. Stein has fleshed out an essential and enigmatic chapter in contemporary art. While entirely absorbed with the artists he discovered and exhibited Bellamy had an oddly contrarian indifference to making sales. When the artists he championed soared in the red hot art market he was nowhere to be seen. Reflecting his Eurasian heritage Bellamy was more a monk with a begging bowl than an aggressive gallerist.

When you put 4 couples and 3 bedrooms on one witty night, Alan Ayckbourn creates marital mishegoss with a British accent. Trevor and Susannah, with their marriage on the rocks, invade the bedrooms of their family and friends over the course of an evening, spreading chaos in their wake. Director Maria Aitken (The 39 Steps, Private Lives) returns to the Huntington Theatre for this light comedy of marital misunderstandings.

Mark-Anthony Turnage created the kind of scandal the arts love when in 1988 he premiered his first opera "Greek." A punkish provocation, it set the hoary myth of Oedipus, he who killed his father and married his mother, in a declining Thatcherite Britain. In choosing it, the BLO, in a dynamic production, asks whether it is still relevant.

The elegant, exquisitely designed and printed book "Captured by Light: Black and White Photographs-Fifty Years" summarizes a lifetime of work by Eric Myrvaagnes.

The leadership of the multi-award winning Island City Stage, a bold and daring Wilton company near Ft. Lauderdale is dedicated to “producing theatrical experiences that positively impact the LGBT and general community,." “Perfect Arrangement” by Topher Payne centers on an effort to track down and fire homosexuals who worked for the U.S. government in the 1950s. .