How art talks to itself
In one form or another, the biennial Rochester-Finger Lakes exhibition has been a showcase for Western and Central New York artists for over 100 years. And this year is no exception, as the exhibition celebrates its 59th anniversary. Of course, what exactly the exhibition showcases has often been a source of controversy. And in…
Finishing strong with the elaborate and the offbeat
The Shaw Festival’s productions have been getting progressively better all summer. The two final openings this season, an offbeat musical and an elaborate comedy, were greeted with wildly enthusiastic applause, and rightly so. Both works are demanding enough to warrant a “Not For Amateurs” warning label, but Shaw’s superb artistic ensemble triumphs in them. …
Cartographic bliss
Every map is a treasure map. For those initiated into their secret language, maps promise much and often deliver. Every map can be an explanation, a revelation. For instance, I’ve pondered for years why Rochester was a boomtown in the early 1800s, the Young Lion of the West. Why it reached a then-impressive population…
We need some real cowboys again
The release of Kevin Costner’s generally impressive new picture, Open Range, ironically emphasizes the delicate condition of that once robust genre, the Western. Innumerable students of the form at every level of learning offer a wide variety of reasons for its virtual disappearance over the last three decades — the war in Vietnam, a new…
Nowhere to go and all day to get there
It’s been a decade since the bafflingly popular Merchant-Ivory team has churned out anything I could even remotely recommend to friends and family. Since Remains of the Day, director and co-writer James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala have made a couple of really awful pictures (Jefferson in Paris and Surviving Picasso),…
News briefs 8.20.03
The power of sauce, hope, and Motown “Where is my Temptations tape?” asks Betty Smith. “I can’t do anything without it.” Someone gets the Motown playing for her, and Smith looks more relaxed. It’s a day when the soundtrack should be just right: It is the first production run for Miss Betty’s Down Home Sauce.…
Reader feedback 8.20.03
Ginna’s future, taxing ‘little people,’ City’s writers
Vets: wounded once more
After seven quiet decades on a back street of a small town, the Canandaigua VA Medical Center is generating some noise. Actually, it’s a public uproar. And it’s directed at the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, which seems intent on closing the Canandaigua VA essentially to save money to spend elsewhere. The VA…
Primary challenge: the city School Board race
Seven people are running in a Democratic primary for what must surely be the most thankless of all local elected offices, the Rochester School Board. Although there will be Republican, Independence, and Working Families parties on the ballot in the November election, the four winners of the September 9 Democratic primary will have a strong…
