by Witold | Jan 28, 2019 | Design, Modern life
Watching the French television political soap Marseille—but anything with Gérard Depardieu can’t be all bad—I was struck, again, by how much the French like modern design. The furniture in the scenes was inevitably modernist, more so than would be the case in Madame...
by Witold | Dec 6, 2018 | Modern life
What is it with Americans and fruitcakes? For many years we used to throw an annual midday New Year’s Day party. Bloody Marys, big buffet table, Niman Ranch ham, stuff like that. People seemed to enjoy the food, but we noticed that there was usually leftover...
by Witold | Oct 4, 2018 | Modern life
I attended McGill University, which is sometimes described as “the Harvard of the North.” After reading Ross Douthat’s column on the Ivy League in today’s New York Times, it’s evident that it really isn’t—or at least wasn’t when I was there. One difference is that...
by Witold | Sep 14, 2018 | Modern life
Richard Terrill recounts a wonderful story in “Who Was Bill Evans?” Jazz bandleader Stan Kenton told a story about himself as a kid, trying to sneak into a Paris club to hear jazz. He was too young to drink, even in France. The concierge finally said, ok, just go sit...
by Witold | Jun 22, 2018 | Modern life
“Modernism wasn’t just a style—it was a way of thinking, a way of life,” expounds Jessica Todd Smith in a video on the Philadelphia Museum of Art website. Smith, who is the curator of the current PMA show, “Modern Times: American Art 1910-1950” (on view until...
by Witold | Jun 3, 2018 | Architects, Architecture, Modern life
The first university architecture programs appeared in the late nineteenth century, at MIT (1865) and the University of Pennsylvania (1868). Previously—and for a long time thereafter—most architects in the English-speaking world learned their craft through...
