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The best critics don’t just guide us to (or away from) worthwhile arts and letters; they help us challenge our assumptions. And they inspire writerly envy and admiration in equal parts because they make it look so, so easy.

Seven years ago On Liking Women announced the arrival of Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu. Authority, her just-published collection of criticism, acidly tackles mixed-race protagonists in film, clear-eyed assessments of Sally Rooney and Zadie Smith, the destiny of musical theater as told by Phantom of the Opera, and similar cultural touchstones. Early on, she posits what criticism even means when everybody can voice their opinion online. Plus she’s a world-class mic-dropper (on Phantom: “An artist’s statement from a man whom few had ever accused of artistry.”). Also see her unflinching assessment of Yellowstone, which sadly missed the collection’s cut.

We could use some more slaying of sacred cows right now, and Vulture theater critic Sara Holdren is here with knives. Incisive without being acidic, she asks and answers all the right questions about the Broadway-industrial complex, from the low-wattage Othello to the pop-star casting of The Last Five Years. On the macho pretensions of Glengarry Glen Ross: “When recreation for some intersects so completely with real and present horrors for so many, when do our politics, our consciences, demand that we rethink how we allow ourselves to be entertained?” Yep.

Poet, critic, curator, and publisher of Black Square Editions John Yau approaches art criticism as story, and his work is refreshingly free of overblown arthouse-speak. His tone is accessible and human, drawing in readers with why art evokes emotion, the historical context surrounding the work, and the real labor involved in producing art that casual gallery-goers may take for granted. Also look for his contributions to the semi-regular column Five NYC Art Shows to See This Week.

Bonus: We can’t talk about critics without talking about critics talking about each other. Example: Becca Rothfeld’s spiky review of Andrea Long Chu’s Authority, and the illuminating critic-on-critic action (and book reviews and essays) on Literary Hub.

Also read Inkoo Kang’s thoughtful TV essays for The New Yorker. And subscribe to Jessa Crispin’s The Culture We Deserve substack, with considered feminist takes on Neil Gaiman, the Ozempic economy, and dead geniuses.

Communication is always looking to evolve.

We can't stop thinking about Sunset Boulevard on Broadway, which emphasizes the live element of theater in such inventive ways. The audiovisual component, the creative use of the theater's interior, and the tension of a live performance make for theater we've never seen before. The cast thinks on their feet, as evidenced by Nicole Scherzinger's command performance with a bullhorn as a tech problem forced a matinee cancellation last week. She felt so bummed out that people were going to leave without seeing the show that she quickly thought on her feet to do something transcendent.

We've also been digging the family nostalgia, songs, and surprising amount of alcohol consumption in the 1977 classic Pete's Dragon, as well as the romance of Mia Sheridan novels (Loving boldly means you get to win every day. Truth.).

Alex Van Halen recently put out a memoir that's unlike any music bio we've read. When his family moved from Amsterdam to Pasadena, they didn't have a lot of financial resources and didn't know the language, so he and his brother used music to communicate with people.

Cities balance the needs of the many and the needs of the one, asking us to do the same. The results are always gloriously unexpected.

Described as “The New Yorker for Architects,” The New York Review of Architecture is brainy and accessible (our favorite combination), taking on everything from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the Hungarian Pastry Shop, the Louis Vuitton Flagship Store to Rikers Island. The newest edition just arrived with essays on the city’s singular relationship with rats, the tiresome narratives of genius male architects, and the image-driven politics of landmark preservation. Available online, but we recommend you savor the print edition too.

Desired Landscapes is a curious print magazine encompassing city guides, memoirs, photography and sketchbooks, and purpose-built pathways leading to our memories and inner thoughts. Driven by community, not advertising (slogan: “We read to walk and walk to write.”), the most recent issue explores the vanishing facades of family-owned businesses, living in a city cleaved by a river, cities as forests not in terms of nature but of navigation and justice, systems of transit constructing our sense of place, and other beautifully heady urbanities.

Las Vegas is endlessly dissected, lamented, and mythologized, but rarely seriously considered for its considerable love-it-or-hate-it contributions to modern architecture. Organized by The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, the annual conference Duck Duck Shed (April 24-27) aims to correct that injustice with presentations on the power of roadside signs, the form and function of casino carpeting, the art of blowing up old buildings, and how art and commerce easily(?) sit side-by-side in air-conditioned splendor.

Bonus: Ian Frazier’s Paradise Bronx is an entertaining consideration of NYC’s most misunderstood borough, one he walked a thousand miles in to (re)discover its gardens and thruways, Dutch beginnings and hip-hop shrines. A magnum opus that reads lightly, what a gift.

There’s a saying that “choosing a typeface is like choosing an outfit for your words.”

We are endlessly inspired by type and its unique power to fuse language, design, and ideas, regardless of scale. This week, we’re sharing our recent typography-related finds in the wild.

Letters contort, gush, and burst forth from the pages of TYPEONE’s exquisite annual magazine, full of essays, interviews, and stunning design showcases. The recent issue #09 is an exploration of how packaging influences not just the marketplace but our relationship with food, the environment, and each other. TYPEONE is a reliably provocative lookbook showcasing how words and design connect global systems.

Sure, the Helveticas and Garamonds of the world get big signage deals and corporate website assignments. But what about typography’s hidden heroes? Marcin Wichary did a longform visual essay on The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan, and it’s probably one you’ve never heard of, though you’ll recognize it immediately. It reminded us how words can so fully become part of our landscape as to be unseen, then become revelatory when rediscovered.

Balance, harmony, hierarchy of information—we look at clocks all day but rarely question these elements affecting our reading experience. Cam Wolf’s excellent piece on Watch Dial Typography examines how brands approach timepiece symbols, and makes us think how the conveyance of time is dictated by the same rules any writer or editor faces: how to effectively communicate within the mechanics of a medium.

Bonus: Follow I Saw The Sign on Instagram. The women-owned sign painting studio does exceptional work in Nashville and beyond, elevating language in ways bold and beautiful.

Books, letters, wolves

A recent exhibition at the Grolier Club, one of North America’s oldest bibliographic societies, was "put together by a bunch of absolute nerds." That's a beautiful compliment for Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books, a collection of the greatest non-existent works in all of literature, from The Songs of the Jabberwock to Sylvia Plath's lost memoir. It was an odd, wistful, and charmingly speculative exhibit you have to see to believe. We hope it gets an encore.

Keeping with the theme of printed joy, still-life painter Fern Apfel is drawn to all things paper in her new exhibition Letters Home. From playing cards to old stamps to pages of well-worn books, her muses celebrate the tactile. Apfel’s appreciation of memory and nostalgia eschew wistfulness in favor of hope and love. Letters Home is, you guessed correctly, focused on the beauty in old letters and how they act as portals to loved ones, parents, old friends, and our old selves.

Just outside New York City, wild wolves lie in wait. For 25 years, the Wolf Conservation Center in Westchester County has worked to return critically endangered Red Wolves and Mexican Gray Wolves to their natural habitat. The regular tours are absolutely worth a trip upstate one weekend, and you can join the howls overnight in the Sleeping With Wolves experience, which runs $150 for one person in a tent (on the other side of the fence). Or, check in every once in a while via the live webcams.

Traitors, lesbians, jazz

Renee Gladman's My Lesbian Novel delivers an extraordinary meditation on writing and the writerly process. Guided by her ongoing interview with an unidentified narrator, their conversation unfolds as Gladman reflects on her ideals for a lesbian romance novel and the deconstructed, non-linear process that guides her work and ideation. Extraordinary. You'll have never read anything like it.

We'll spare you our treatise on the importance of the high and low in any cultural diet and get straight to the point: not only is Traitors Season 3 a fascinating romp through the human psyche, Alan Cumming is electric, on fire, and absolutely tantalizing in some of the best (and best-dressed) work of his career. The newly released season 3 and the entire franchise are a balm for weary minds and a boon for those who relish reality TV.

The Christine Sun Kim retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art (also traveling to Walker Art Center in Minneapolis) explores sound, language, and the complexities of communication through her mixed-media practice. And, we've never seen anything like it. Over 90 works explore Kim's Deaf lived experiences, examining her life within shared social spaces where sound is taken as a given.

Want to go down an existential wormhole with a knowledgeable and friendly guide? Janna Levin, theoretical cosmologist, black hole expert, and professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, is always at the center of a crowd of thinkers, artists, and scientists. Start your journey by reading her Gossamer profile and listening to her Joy Of Why podcast.

For any Severance fans wondering what that song is from the opening scene of Season 2, it is the propulsive, Ocean’s 11-esque Burnin’ Coal by the legendary jazz pianist Les McCann. The album it’s off of, Much Les, is an underrated classic and worth a listen. McCann’s body of work provided samples for later artists A Tribe Called Quest, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, the Notorious B.I.G., and countless others.

Tilda, Kafka, Clothes

The Interview is a reliably excellent long-form article and podcast series from the New York Times, and guest Tilda Swinton delivered the goods in a recent episode. As she promotes her new Pedro Almodóvar film The Room Next Door, she explores grief, catharsis, friendship, bearing witness, and lived experiences. And she does it with Swintonesque honesty, humor, and curiosity.

Our idea of fashion is shaped so much by film and television, it's easy to forget that throughout history all women were not fitted on a Hollywood backlot. Real Clothes, Real Lives at the New York Historical Society explores 200 years of everyday clothing women wore, and a perfect encapsulation of how race, class, and economics shape the way we look.

Perhaps the most beautiful building in New York City, The Morgan Library & Museum is worth a visit even if it weren't showing the exceptional new Franz Kafka exhibit (November 22, 2024 through April 13, 2025). The focus on Kafka's peculiar afterlife and massive influence is fascinating. How many writers have a name that becomes an adjective?

On the surface, Sergio De La Pava’s novel Every Arc Bends Its Radian is a clever detective story set in Cali, Columbia. But like all great noir, it deploys a colorful location and weary hero in service of philosophy about memory, family, the nature of evil, and other fun stuff.

Creative Shares from Antonym