Culture

By Bobbie Leigh Art critic and painter Roger de Piles said it best: “Excepting Titian only, van Dyck surpasses all the painters that went before him, or have come after him, in portraits.”   That was in 1706.  Still true? You can decide after seeing the phenomenal exhibition, “Van Dyck: The

By Bobbie Leigh For the in-the-know or the inexperienced,  Asia Week New York is a marvel:  five auction houses and  45 international Asian art galleries  transform Manhattan  into a  once-a-year- showcase  for museum-quality exhibitions. “Asia Week New York, now celebrating its seventh anniversary, is more exciting than ever,” says Lark

By Bobbie Leigh Coney Island, the people’s playground at the southern tip of Brooklyn, is an American icon –like Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Niagara Falls.   The exhibition “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland 1861-2008,” at the Brooklyn Museum  covers almost 150 years of the historic playground. It closes March

Visit Voronet and Sucevita, vividly painted church monasteries in the Bucovina region of northern Romania, and you will be blown away. Eight churches in this region are listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites, but these two— the youngest and the oldest—are the most compelling.

by Bobbie Leigh Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart changed the world. He still “owns”  the Austrian city of  Salzburg where he was born, lived, and performed.  Mozart Week  in January as well as the Salzburg Festival  are  like Wagner’s  Bayreuth, a must on any music lover’s  list.   The  Hollywood film, “Sound of

By Bobbie Leigh At the recent New York Times travel show, a visitor queried cruise and tour companies searching for a Black Sea cruise.  She found a few but none as compelling  and complete as the joint Yale and Metropolitan  Museum of Art’s circumnavigation of the Black Sea, September 24-

By Bobbie Leigh The Whitney Museum of American Art opens May 1 with a flourish of buzzy celebrity gatherings, a block party and free admission May 2. The inaugural exhibition, “America is Hard to See,” is huge, some 600 works by 400 artists tracing the history of American art from

By Bobbie Leigh “Buddhist Art of Myanmar” at New York’s  Asia Society is a pathway to a deeper appreciation of  Buddhism.  You can  view  this  exhibition as an art historical show  full of  treasures that have rarely been seen in the United States. At the same time,  it could also

by Bobbie Leigh Miami remains an active art hub, even after Art Basel departs. One pacesetter in the Miami art scene is the Bass Museum of Art, a non-profit municipal museum with refreshingly eclectic, contemporary exhibitions. When it was founded 51 years ago, the Bass was a small, regional institution