Critic’s Notebook
The Whole World Gets Into the Groove
By JON PARELES
Globalfest 2014 was a 12-act world-music showcase that included dance music, gospel, African beats and many other genres.
Coaxing the Eclectic Out of an Australian Arts Festival
By JANELLE CARRIGAN
Rémi Chauvin/MONA
Brian Ritchie, curator of a growing arts festival and a bassist with the American alternative band Violent Femmes.
Brian Ritchie, who relocated to Tasmania, is imbuing the MOFO festival with his alternative style.
Spanish Opera House to Lose Crumbling Facade by Star Architect
By RAPHAEL MINDER
The structural problems of Valencia’s opera house, which has been closed because of falling tiles, are the latest in the travails of Santiago Calatrava.
Horror Thriller Has Major Bite in Israel
By JOHN ANDERSON
The Israeli directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado have been winning awards in their country for their thriller “Big Bad Wolves.”
Nairobi Journal
African Artists, Lifted by the Promises of Democracy and the Web
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Technology, democratic aspirations and economic growth have created new spaces for young African artists to thrive.
Amiri Baraka, Polarizing Poet and Playwright, Dies at 79
By MARGALIT FOX
Mr. Baraka’s work was widely anthologized, and he was also long famous as a political firebrand, with critical opinion divided in every arena.
C. T. Hsia, Who Brought Chinese Literature to the West, Dies at 92
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Dr. Hsia helped introduce modern Chinese literature to the West in the 1960s while teaching at Columbia University.
Diligence Promised in Studying Looted Art
By MELISSA EDDY
Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, head of a task force on Nazi-looted art, says revealing a timetable would create pressure.
Books of The Times
‘Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War’
By ROBERT M. GATES
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
In his fascinating new memoir “Duty,” former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates provides highly revealing insights about decision making in both the Obama and Bush White Houses.
In China’s growing art market, now the second largest in the world, outsize auction results often overshadow false sales data and forged art.
A Culture of Bidding
Video: The New Collectors
By DAVID BARBOZA and JONAH M. KESSEL
Like their predecessors across history and geography, China’s newly rich have set out to collect the very best the world has to offer.
The Disrupters
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
From streaming TV to immersive theater, 2013 was a year of cultural upheaval. Here are interviews with the people who broke the rules, from the pop provocateur Miley Cyrus to the rising actor Michael B. Jordan. Plus: James Franco on the rise of the “selfie.”
Special Report | Front Row Center
Paradoxes for Country Opera
By MICHAEL WHITE
At smaller houses scattered around the British countryside, the ideal is still a sense of being welcomed to a private party on a grand estate.
Enduring Nazi Law Impedes Recovery of Art
By MELISSA EDDY and ALISON SMALE
A 1938 law under which the Nazis seized artworks could make it difficult for German museums to recover looted pieces discovered in the apartment of a dealer’s son.
Art Review
Islamic World Through Women’s Eyes
By VICKI GOLDBERG
A show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, of work by female photographers from the Muslim world, challenges stereotypes.
Inside Arts
Theater Review
Connecting With the Classics
By MATT WOLF
The Menier Chocolate Factory’s scaled-down production of “Candide,” the 1956 Broadway musical, offers a fresh perspective; while stars take on two Shakespeare roles.
Exhibition Traces Bauhaus Luminary’s Struggle With His Past
By ALICE RAWSTHORN
An exhibition in Berlin follows the trajectory of the graphic artist Herbert Bayer, who in the 1930s created Nazi propaganda, though he claimed to be apolitical.
Sending Artworks Home, but to Whom?
By TOM MASHBERG
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science will return 30 totems to the National Museums of Kenya, which will decide whether to search for their owners.
Critic’s Notebook
Waltzing Right Past History in Austria
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
At this year’s Vienna Philharmonic annual New Year’s concerts, the focus was again on the music, not the orchestra’s past.
Critic’s Notebook
Otto Schenk’s Opera Stagings Still at Home in Vienna
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
The Vienna State Opera is presenting productions of “Die Fledermaus” and “Fidelio” by the Austrian director Otto Schenk.
A King’s Counselor, Whittled to Size
By PATRICK HEALY
Hilary Mantel’s two Man Booker-winning historical novels, “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies,” are being adapted and condensed for the stage in Britain.
Korean Cash Takes Broadway Bows
By PATRICK HEALY
With Broadway musicals finding success in Seoul, Korean producers are starting to get in on the front end of the financing in New York.
Heartthrobs Rule the Korean Stage
By PATRICK HEALY
“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat” with a celebrity K-pop presence: That’s the sort of musical that’s selling on stages in Seoul.
Photo Project Breaks Barriers in Morocco
By NICOLAI HARTVIG
A first for North Africa, new museum pushes photography as an art form to the forefront.
A British-American Feast on the London Stage
By MATT WOLF
From Harold Pinter to Eugene O'Neill and from musicals to plays, theater in 2013 offered an unusually abundant array from both sides of the Atlantic.
The Carpetbagger
Banned at Home and Noticed by Oscars
By MELENA RYZIK
“Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer” and “The Square,” set in Cairo, are on the shortlist for possible Oscar nominations in the documentary category, but they can’t be shown in their home countries.
Theater Review
Sex, Scandal and a Songsmith
By MATT WOLF
Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical, "Stephen Ward," explores the epicenter of the Profumo affair that rocked London in the early 1960s.
‘Mokujiki Fever’ Endures
By ALICE RAWSTHORN
A show at the Pace Gallery in London examines the power that was unleashed by a 1920s Japanese craft movement.
Book Theft in Italy, With a Hint of Politics
By RACHEL DONADIO
A former Italian senator who received books that went missing from the Girolamini Library in Naples is trying to distance himself from one of the biggest rare-book-theft scandals in history.
An ‘Arab Idol’ Wows His Fans in America
By LINDSAY CROUSE
Mohammed Assaf, a Middle Eastern star since winning “Arab Idol” in June, has played to packed houses on a nine-week tour of North America.
Juxtaposing History With the Fantastic
By RAPHAEL MINDER
The exhibition "Natural Histories," on show in Madrid until late April, takes the Prado back to its origins as a home for natural objects.
Paris Embraces ‘Einstein’ Again
By RACHEL DONADIO
The opera “Einstein on the Beach,” directed by Robert Wilson, with music by Philip Glass, arrives in Paris.
Turning the Page – The International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune, the global edition of The New York Times, has become The International New York Times. A look at its journey.
Recent Highlights
La Dolce Vita Gone Sour (and This Time in Color)
By RACHEL DONADIO
“The Great Beauty,” the new film by Paolo Sorrentino, portrays Italy as a country where the culture is embalmed in elegant decline and inertia seems to overwhelm all forward momentum.
Pinpricks, but No Dagger in Putinland
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art steers cautiously between its ambition to promote that city as a cutting-edge art center and a concern about drawing the wrath of officialdom.
A Star Architect Leaves Some Clients Fuming
By SUZANNE DALEY
The architect Santiago Calatrava is collecting critics as buildings develop problems.
With Festival, Paris Seeks to Reclaim Literary Reputation
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Paris is reaching out to the global literary world to recapture its place on the cutting edge of culture with a new festival of international writers.
A Canvas of Turmoil During Istanbul Biennial
By RACHEL DONADIO
The exhibition, which opens Saturday, planned to focus on public spaces long before the angry protests in May about how the government was developing the city.
East by Far East: Vladivostok Rocks
By MELENA RYZIK
More than 40 acts played free shows over four days last week at V-Rox in Vladivostok, Russia, in the first rock festival of its kind in the country.
Wild Applause, Secretly Choreographed
By ELLEN BARRY
The practice of enlisting claqueurs — spectators assigned to cheer and applaud during performances — is alive and well at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
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