The dramatically lit Aphrodite of Knidos — with her baby, Eros, sleeping at her side — in “The Countless Aspects of Beauty” exhibit at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, a feast for the sense. Photograph by the author.

Greek to us

June 27, 2019

“We’re not interested in Alexander I.”

That’s what one of my colleagues said to me about Alexander the Great (who was Alexander III, but no matter).

I thought about this as I returned to Greece recently on another “Legacy of Alexander the Great” tour, this time with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Arrangements Abroad. I thought about this as we swept by plane from Thessaloniki — Greece’s second largest city, named for one of Alexander’s younger sisters — spitj to Athens, the capital, on a 12-day tour that included buscapades to many of the nation’s most important museums and archaeological sites.

Bartholomeus Spranger’s “Diana-Luna” (1566-1611), oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. The work captures the way art eroticizes the virgin archetype.

America's psychological virgin

May 15, 2019

With the passing of movie star Doris Day May 13 at her home in Carmel Valley, California, at age 97, much has been made of her goody two shoes image on film in the 1960s and the way it was pooh poohed in subsequent decades when attitudes toward women’s sexuality were expanding in the advent of feminism. (It was an image that Day, who had a number of troubled marriages, herself dismissed on “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson,” and indeed she often played complex wives, most notably in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and as the torch singer Ruth Etting in “Love Me or Leave Me.” )

Fire and ice in a week that burned

November 18, 2018

It was another challenging week bookended by ice and snow on the East Coast and wildfires in California. I have no expertise to offer in alleviating the devastation wrought by wildfires, but I do have some thoughts on preventing the havoc wreaked by six inches – yes, a mere six inches – of snow, sleet and rain in New York.

Royal fever

May 12, 2018

I have a confession to make: I am in love with a much younger man – Prince Louis.

OK, so he’s only 3 weeks old but he has stolen my heart. Prince Louis is already a star — thanks to his shutterbug of a mother, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge — but even he will have to take a backseat this week as we get set for the Olympics of romance. I am talking, of course, about the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry May 19 at 7 a.m. (EDT).

As with any such event, this is not a sprint for the press but a marathon. In my guise as editor of WAG magazine, I have been among those whetting the appetite with wedding previews …

No bull: ‘Fearless Girl’s’ ancient Greek evocation

April 17, 2017

The controversy over the faceoff between “Fearless Girl” and “Charging Bull” on Wall Street has raised all sorts of psychosexual and political implications.

Some have seen the 4-foot-girl – hands on hips, chest puffed like a sail heading into the wind – as a symbol of feminist ideals. Apparently, that’s what sponsor State Street Global Advisors, which wants to encourage more women in the boardroom, had in mind. ...