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The ancient practice of genuflecting — seen here in Leonardo’s “The Annunciation” (1472, oil on panel, the Uffizi Gallery), as the archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she is to be the mother of Jesus — has been brilliantly repurposed… — The ancient practice of genuflecting — seen here in Leonardo’s “The Annunciation” (1472, oil on panel, the Uffizi Gallery), as the archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she is to be the mother of Jesus — has been brilliantly repurposed by the Black Lives Matter protesters, beginning with Colin Kaepernick.

Taking a knee for social justice

June 9, 2020

The horrific murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police May 25 set off a tidal wave of national and global outrage that has renewed interest in and debate on Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 protests against racial inequality and police brutality.

Is this the end of 'American exceptionalism'?

April 26, 2020

The Athenian statesman, general and orator Pericles is generally regarded as presiding over the Golden Age of Greece, when Athens was the first among equals of the Greek city-states — ruling the seas in a series of wars; bestowing democracy on freemen; encouraging the arts and literature; and building a series of public works projects that are still with us today in the remnants of the buildings of the Acropolis that include the Parthenon, temple of the city’s patroness, Athena, goddess of wisdom and war in a just cause.But after some 30 years it was all over in 629 B.C. when a plague — perhaps typhus — ripped through Athens, killing Pericles and several members of his family. It was the beginning of the end for Athens, too, which became involved in a long struggle with archrival Sparta.

People often ask me about my fascination with history and in particular the Greeks and Alexander the Great, the Greco-Macedonian conqueror who would come along 300 years later and avenge all the Greeks suffered at the hands of the Persians, their foreign rivals, including the burning of that Acropolis. Let’s be frank here, shall we? People find my fascination with history and the Greeks at best quaint and at worst out of touch. They don’t just ask me about it, they ridicule me about it.

Who’s laughing now?…

The Trumpian return to classicism

February 10, 2020

Far be it from me to agree with President Donald J. Trump on anything, but as the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Trump’s decision to MABGA — Make American Buildings Great Again — finds him decreeing in a new executive order that federal buildings in Washington, D.C. should be classical in style, rather than Modern.

The liberal media, Modernists and the art world are not taking this well — understandably. Everyone gets nervous when the federal government starts telling folks what to do, especially conservatives. And Modernism isn’t less a standard of beauty than classicism, Marion Smith, chairwoman of the National Civic Art Society, which is leading the anti-Modernist charge, notwithstanding. As the great composer-pianist Duke Ellington — who wrote jazz standards and classical works alike — observed, there are only two types of music, good and bad. So it is with all the arts.

But the Trump order is in keeping with a growing backlash against Modernism n art and design.

Between Iraq and a hard place

January 7, 2020

So President Donald J. Trump, a man who’s always tilting at “cancer-causing” windmills, finally has something to rail against for real. From the beginning, he’s been against Iran and all Muslims and anything he imagined President Barack Obama espoused, whether he actually did (like the Iran nuclear deal) or not (the Muslim Brotherhood).

Trump and the empathy paradox

November 23, 2019

On Nov. 20 — which, as it turned out, would’ve been the 94th birthday of onetime Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan on June 5, 1968 — PBS’ “Nova” aired a fascinating program, “The Violence Paradox” — one that said a lot about the paradox of empathy in our own time.

Based on the controversial work of psychologist Steven Pinker, the program posited that civilization has become increasingly less violent — yes, despite a world in which every Middle Eastern, African and South American country appears to be protesting its corrupt leadership, Hong Kong students are fighting for democracy against China in a classic David-versus-Goliath battle; and school shootings continue unchecked in the United States.

Faux pas de deux -- Lara Spencer's cultural ignorance

August 28, 2019

The contretemps over “Good Morning America” co-anchor Lara Spencer mocking Prince George for taking ballet lessons is both a tempest in a teapot and the latest salvo in the culture wars that began with the demonization of Western civilization in the 1960s by liberals who could not separate it from its imperialistic, colonial roots and continued with the demonization of the arts in the 1970s and ’80s by conservatives who decried the arts falsely as a louche tax drain.

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Spencer retorted to the news that the young prince is taking ballet lessons, with his father Prince William’s enthusiastic approval. It was the flippant, stupid remark of someone with no cultural background (remember her short-lived stint on PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow”?) trying to be witty or at least cool, and it was met with swift condemnation, a swift apology and a redemptive moment played out against the backdrop of 300 male dancers in Manhattan’s Times Square.

And that would be the end of it, except that, as one person put it, you can’t unring a bell, particularly in a divisive time in which every statement seems to be a clarion call to partisanship. Perhaps that’s unfair. We all make mistakes. We’re all more than our worst days. Yet Spencer’s ridicule cannot be undone, particularly for those who have been mercilessly bullied or marginalized for their love of the arts.