O’Keeffe blooms at the Phillips

The Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction exhibition opening this week at the Phillips Collection will radically redefine the way people view the iconic artist. O’Keeffe becomes youthful, revolutionary, and full of contradictions.

Archaeology photography: Can you dig it?

The Lucille and Richard Spagnuolo Gallery is trying to shed its perception as the odd room you might glance at while swiping your GoCard on the way into the LXR courtyard. The banners outside of Walsh announcing its new exhibition, The Creative Photograph in Archaeology, seem to herald the transformation of the space from an afterthought into a legitimate showcase of artistic works.

Bring streetcars to the District

With budget problems mounting every week for D.C. transportation organizations, it’s hard to think about investing $1.5 billion over the next seven to ten years in an entirely new citywide transportation system. But the District Department of Transportation invited Washingtonians to do just that last week, when it unveiled its 3-phase streetcar plan, which would [...]

Come on ride the train: hike gas taxes, fix WMATA

The summer of 2008 was a fantastic time for those in D.C. who often gaze wistfully at efficient and popular public transportation systems of European cities. It seemed as though overseas attitudes––such as how public transportation is better for the environment, cheaper, and even more enjoyable than being stuck in traffic for hours a day––had [...]

Hitting the G-20 spot in Pittsburgh

The list of the host cities of the G-20 Leaders Summits for this year has a bit of a jarring finish: D.C., London, and … Pittsburgh? New York City, or Tokyo, or Paris would fit in better with that list of metropolises. President Obama did, in fact, ask New York City to host the event, [...]

Slim health facts can’t hide expanding waistlines

Of the various health care bills currently floating around the House and Senate, the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) wrote the one with the most name recognition. The Affordable Health Choices Act calls for many necessary improvements to the health care system, but one of its potentially most [...]

Sweet Coraline, 3D never looked so good

In an industry where bad romantic comedies and gratuitous horror flicks can be filmed in as few as six weeks, it’s comforting to know that it took six months to knit some of the tiny sweaters worn by the dolls in Coraline. Made with thread at times no thicker than a strand of hair, the [...]

Frost thaws Nixon’s hubristic silence

In the pop culture psyche of many Americans, Richard Nixon’s life and career ends at the moment when his most notorious picture was taken: arms raised in the air waving two identical peace signs. Not much is commonly known about the last 20 years of his life, which were spent in quiet disgrace on the [...]

Synecdoche: A story of its own

In the first film he’s both written and directed, Synecdoche, NY, Charlie Kaufman employs one of the most common archetypes of our time: the sad, unattractive, pot-bellied, middle-aged husband who doesn’t feel like his life has a drop of significance. But where other films find the usual fixes in new jobs or women, Synecdoche enters into a different reality altogether. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Caden Cotard watches his body deteriorate and his world become less and less like the one we actually live in, as Kaufman creates an alternate world where the normal laws of society, time, and physics don’t apply. The viewer must likewise abandon logic and reason, but the reward will be an emotionally challenging and visually astounding journey.

National Coming Out Day—a time to just be yourself

On a night like many other during my freshman year, I sat in the Leavey Center’s big comfy chairs and pretended to do homework with friends from my floor. But on this night, my friend took me and another friend aside and said that she had something important to tell us. I had no idea what it could be, but after she started to say what was on her mind, stopped, and tried again in a different way, I realized that whatever it was, it was big and daunting for her. We encouraged her to just get it out there.

“I think I might like girls,” she finally said.

“You might?” my naïve self asked, not quite grasping what she was trying to tell us.