Podcast appearances and mentions of philip kennicott

The Washington Post's Philip Kennicott is here to tell us the ways Donald Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center could do massive damage — but maybe not the exact damage a lot of people are predicting. Want some more DC news? Then make sure to sign up for our morning newsletter Hey DC. You can also become a member, with ad-free listening, for as little as $8 a month. Learn more about the sponsors of this February 24th episode: The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University District Bridges Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info HERE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Congress and President Biden officially approved a monument commemorating women's suffrage to go on the National Mall. There's limited space on the Mall, so adding a new memorial or site is actually pretty complicated. In 2022, we spoke to Philip Kennicott from The Washington Post about a vision for a bigger, better National Mall.   Want some more DC news? Then make sure to sign up for our morning newsletter Hey DC. You can also become a member, with ad-free listening, for as little as $8 a month. Learn more about the sponsors of this January 8th episode: Call2Recycle Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info HERE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 24, 2024 is: jeremiad • jair-uh-MYE-ud • noun Jeremiad refers to a long cautionary or angry rant about something. It can also refer to a similarly prolonged lamentation, or expression of great sorrow or deep sadness. // His jeremiad about trivial problems with the campsite didn't go over well with his friends. See the entry > Examples: “One of the most exciting exhibitions now on view is Josh Kline's ‘Project for a New American Century' at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Kline uses video, sculpture and installation to explore the social, political and environmental crises we are facing. ... But Kline's work transcends the jeremiad and grapples with the persistence of beauty as a basic adaptive tool. And unlike any other artist I've encountered recently, he works simultaneously in the utopian and dystopian mode.” — Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post, 8 June 2023 Did you know? Jeremiah was a Jewish prophet, who lived from about 650 to 570 B.C. and spent his days lambasting the Hebrews for their false worship and social injustice and denouncing the king for his selfishness, materialism, and inequities. When not calling on his people to quit their wicked ways, he was lamenting his own lot; a portion of the biblical Book of Jeremiah is devoted to his "confessions," a series of lamentations on the hardships endured by a prophet with an unpopular message. Nowadays, English speakers use Jeremiah for a pessimistic person and jeremiad for the way these Jeremiahs carry on. The word jeremiad was borrowed from the French, who coined it as jérémiade.

O crítico de arte Philip Kennicott publicou um artigo intitulado “Uma fotografia poderosa que pode mudar os EUA para sempre” no Washington Post neste domingo, 14. Kennicott discute a recente foto tirada por Evan Vucci, da Associated Press, que mostra Donald Trump ensanguentado após um tiroteio em um comício na Pensilvânia.Essa imagem, segundo Kennicott, “pode mudar os EUA para sempre”.Ser Antagonista é fiscalizar o poder. Apoie o jornalismo Vigilante:  https://bit.ly/planosdeassinatura   Acompanhe O Antagonista no canal do WhatsApp.  Boletins diários, conteúdos exclusivos em vídeo e muito mais.   https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va2S...   Ouça O Antagonista | Crusoé quando quiser nos principais aplicativos de podcast.  Leia mais em www.oantagonista.com.br | www.crusoe.com.br

Philip Kennicott escribe 'Contrapunto', un ensayo que trae Use Lahoz sobre los últimos momentos del escritor con su madre y la compañía musical de Bach. Escuchar audio

Amor en los relatos de Marta Jiménez y en el 'Contrapunto' de Philip Kennicott, también con el Dansa València y la 'María Luisa' de Juan Mayorga. Siguenos en Twitter (@ElOjoCriticoRNE) e Instagram (@ojocritico_rne) Escuchar audio

The National Mall has limited space. So what happens when you want to add a new monument or site? This is actuallu poised to take place with the addition of two new museums. Philip Kennicott, the Washington Post's Art and architecture critic, has a big vision for a better National Mall.  Be sure to sign up for our morning newsletter and follow us at @citycast_dc. And we'd love to feature you on the show! Share your DC-related thoughts, hopes, and frustrations with us in a voicemail by calling 2026422654. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The House committee investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has generated a lot of interest in one of the National Portrait Gallery's latest commissions -- an official portrait of former President Donald Trump. So we decided to revisit an episode that takes a spin through the ‘America's Presidents' exhibition. Director Kim Sajet digs into the thorny question of what a presidential portrait is meant to convey, especially if the president in question has been impeached. Should it carry the glow of prestige, or the markers of personal failings? Is this gallery hallowed ground, or a place to question power? "If you're in the business of showing these paintings," says Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott, "you want to send people out a little hungry." Also featuring former deputy director Carolyn Carr. See the portraits we discuss here: President James Buchanan President Richard Nixon President George H. W. Bush President Bill Clinton President George W. Bush President Barack Obama

Bob speaks with “The Outsider” co-director Steve Rosenbaum about his film documenting the fraught creation of the National September 11 Memorial & MuseumTEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt, I'm Bob Garfield. Episode 8: The Outsider.It has been twenty years since the bloody horrors of September 11th, 2001 scarred lower Manhattan and the American psyche. Within three years of the terror acts that claimed nearly 3,000 innocent lives, plans were underway to commemorate the fateful day and its events for posterity. The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum would be constructed on the hallowed footprint of the atrocity. A decade later, the half-billion dollar project would be opened to the public. Here was President Barack Obama at the dedication ceremony:OBAMA: A nation that stands tall and united and unafraid -- because no act of terror can match the strength or the character of our country. Like the great wall and bedrock that embrace us today, nothing can ever break us; nothing can change who we are as Americans.GARFIELD: That was perhaps a fitting tribute to a new national shrine, the memorial part of the project that must necessarily dwell in the grief, the sacrifice, the heroism that so dominate the 9/11 narrative. But what Obama left out was the museum part and its role of exploration, illumination and inquiry, such as where do those acts of terror and their bloody toll fit into the broader sweep of history, into America's story, into our understanding of human events before and since? If the dedication ceremony was appropriately a moment for communion and remembrance and resolve, surely the ongoing work of the museum would go beyond the heroism and sacrifice to the complex history and geopolitics that led to 9/11 evil.SHULAN: One of the key meta narratives of this exhibition, one of the most important things about this exhibition, is to say to people, “Use your eyes, look around you, look at the world and understand what you're seeing.” And if we don't do that with the material that we're presenting to people, then how can we give them that message? How will that message ever get through?GARFIELD: A new documentary by husband and wife filmmakers Pam Yoder and Steve Rosenbaum offers an inside view of the creation of the 9/11 Museum. It tells the story of the storytellers as they labor for a decade, collecting artifacts, designing exhibits, and editing the narratives flowing from that fateful day. And its protagonist was a relatively minor character who was propelled by internal conflict among the museum's planners into a central role in this story. The film is called “The Outsider,” available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Vudu, Facebook and other platforms. Steve Rosenbaum joins me now. Steve, welcome to Bully Pulpit.ROSENBAUM: I am so glad to be here, because I've always wanted to be on a bully pulpit.GARFIELD: Uh huh. Well, congratulations. You have achieved your dream, perhaps your destiny. OK, first, a whole lot of disclosure. You and I have been friends for most of our adult lives, so about 100 years, and I've been following your progress in getting this movie made for a long time. And furthermore, at more or less the last minute this summer, I stepped in to help write the narration and ended up voicing it in your movie. So I'm not exactly bringing critical distance into this conversation, but I still have a lot of questions. You ready?ROSENBAUM: I am ready indeed.GARFIELD: OK, so not only have you made a feature length movie about a process, it is a feature length movie about the process of museum curation with most of the action taking place around conference tables. So what I'm saying is Fast and Furious, it isn't.ROSENBAUM: You know, the Blue Room, which is the conference room you're referring to, was both the magical place where the magic happened and also a bit of our albatross because it is, in fact, a conference.GARFIELD: So in the end, though, you do manage to capture quite a bit of drama, quite a bit of drama, but there is no way you could have anticipated, when you got started, what would emerge over these years and -- how many hours of film?ROSENBAUM: 670. GARFIELD: Over how long a period of time?ROSENBAUM: Six and a half years.GARFIELD: How did you come to be a fly on the wall for six and a half years as they undertook this project?ROSENBAUM: So we negotiated with a then non-existent museum to trade them a very precious, valuable archive that my wife and I had lovingly gathered over many years in exchange for access to the construction, design, and development of the museum. And I think at the beginning, everyone thought it was fairly harmless. Like, what could go wrong? I mean, the museum will be fantastic and they'll record all of its fantasticalness, and that will be a film.GARFIELD: When you went in there for those six and a half years, it was purely as a matter of documentation, right? You didn't walk in with a premise or a hypothesis or a scenario or an angle, much less an agenda. But there must have been some sort of core interest, some focus when you undertook this project.ROSENBAUM: You have to remember that in the weeks after 9/11, particularly in New York, there was this extraordinary feeling of camaraderie and connectedness, both among New Yorkers and also around the world. And the sense that maybe what would come of this terrible day is some real goodness, that people would understand each other, that we'd be part of a global community. And so, we brought that, what now seems like naive optimism, to the museum. And they, at least in the early days, fueled that. I mean, they said to us, “We're going to build a different kind of museum. It's going to be open and participatory. It's going to be democratic.” And, you know, that worked for us as filmmakers. We thought a different kind of museum in a country that's gone through a terrible day and hopefully will come out of it stronger and wiser and, you know, more introspection--GARFIELD: But as of at least a year ago, you really didn't know what your film was going to be about. You didn't really have a movie scenario.ROSENBAUM: Well, you have to start with the problem that we had as a filmmaker, as filmmakers, which was a) No one gives a s**t about museums and how they're made. There's zero public interest in that. And then secondly, as it turned out, no one really gave a s**t about the museum. Nobody went to it other than tourists. Thoughtful people, historians, scholars, New Yorkers, media people didn't go there in droves. So, we're like, “How do we make a movie about a museum nobody cares about?” And in fact, the museum opened in 2014 and we spent three or four years fumfering around trying to get our arms around a movie we could make and pretty much gave up. And then Pam, my filmmaking partner and life partner and smarter person than I am, came to me one day and she said, “You know, I think there's a scene that might help.” And she came out with this little -- in her hand, this little Hi 8 tape, she handed it to me, said, “Put it in the deck.”And it was this exhibit in Soho. It was a photo exhibit, which I actually remember going to and some of your listeners may remember as well. It was called “Here is New York,” and it was literally the first crowdsourced photo exhibit in history. All of these people with little mini cameras made pictures of 9/11. And this character, a guy named Michael Shulan, who is a kind of a failed author, owned a little storefront gallery that had been essentially empty, put a picture on the window. And what exploded there was this spectacular collection of real person pictures. And so, the scene that Pam found was of this guy, who we had at that point never met -- one of our camera people had recorded him -- telling the story of why they gathered these pictures.SHULAN: We've asked basically that anyone bring us their pictures and we will display them. And to date we've probably had sixty or seventy people who've brought in pictures in the past two days.GARFIELD: So two things. One, this clip Pam found was from video you guys had shot twenty years ago for a previous movie about 9/11's aftermath called “Seven Days in September.” And you watch it and you're like, “Holy hell, that's Michael.” He is one of the guys who wound up on the museum planning staff, and you have been filming for six and a half years.ROSENBAUM: You know, we have 500 hours of the day of 9/11 and 670 hours shot at the museum construction. It is the definition, the filmmaking definition, of a needle in a haystack. We literally didn't know we had the Shulan scene until Pam magically pulled it out of -- the rabbit out of the hat. And Shulan was one of the five people we had chosen to follow for all six and a half years. And so, the combination of that -- and “Here is New York” is a wonderful kind of mile marker for where the film began because Michael talks about democracy and openness and sharing and letting people kind of find their own story in the photos. And that's exactly what the museum began as.GARFIELD: You say it was a needle in a haystack, finding this film of one of your characters surface. It was also very serendipitous because Shulan, who had the title of museum creative director and who is the “outsider” of the title -- of your title -- is not a professional museum executive or even a professional curator. He had this storefront where he crowdsourced this enormous collection of, you know, amateur images of the day and its aftermath.SHULAN: I live in this little building on Prince Street in Soho, which was inside of the World Trade Center. On the storefront of the empty shop, someone had taped up a copy of the 9/11 morning's newspaper and people were touching this thing and seeming to take some solace in this. And I suddenly remembered I had an old picture of the World Trade Center. So I ran upstairs and I got this picture and I taped it up. And as the day wore on, I noticed that people now came by and were starting to take pictures of the picture. And that was how the whole thing started.GARFIELD: And he was kind of thrust by events into the spotlight, which is how he got hired by the museum to begin with, right?ROSENBAUM: That's exactly correct. But I don't want to, you know, sell him short. I mean, he's quite brilliant in the way that lots of thoughtful New Yorkers are about images and sound and picture. He's just not a museum person in that he doesn't play by the rules. And I think it's important to foreshadow that because, you know, nobody who hired him could have had any confusion about what his behavior was going to be. I mean, he wore his heart on his sleeve.SHULAN: 9/11 was about seeing. 9/11 was about understanding that the world was a different place than you thought it was. It didn't start on the morning of 9/11. It started twenty or thirty or forty or fifty years before that, and we didn't see it.GARFIELD: You know, I've seen this movie now a number of times. He is clearly, as you say, a smart and interesting guy. He is a very thoughtful guy. He is a man of principle. What he isn't exactly, is a charmer.SPEAKER: Robert--SHULAN: Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you care what this project looks like?SPEAKER: Michael, I care very much what this project looks like, but we are in a process that makes decisions and moves forward.SHULAN: But the process makes the decision. You made a check, but is it the right decision?ROSENBAUM: No, he's abrasive. But, you know, I'm personally very fond of him, both as a character and as a human being, because I don't think 9/11 needs lots of people patting it on the head and telling it how heroic that day is. I think we need more of him, not less of him.GARFIELD: And this will ultimately coalesce into the thematic basis of the film, because Shulan was not only abrasive, but he's a man with a point of view. And his point of view was very specific. He believed that a museum documenting 9/11 should not be pedantic and definitive, it should be open ended and inquiring -- well, I'll let him say it:SHULAN: One of the conditions I laid down both explicitly to Alice and to myself when I took the job was that if we were going to make this museum, that we had to tell the history of what actually happened.GARFIELD: Which is not categorically a bad way of approaching museum curation, is it?ROSENBAUM: No. In fact, if you think about your journeys to museums and the ones that you remember, if you've ever gone to one -- I mean, you know, if you go to the Met or to MoMA or the Whitney, there'll be some art in those museums that you like very much and there'll be some other art that you'll look at and go, “Why in God's name did anybody put this thing in this building?” And museum curators don't do that accidentally. They want to challenge your comfort zone. They want to show you things you may not like, and then they want you to think about why you don't like them. So, I don't think museums succeed by being simplistic or pedantic.GARFIELD: Well, as we shall see, there were those who wished not to have this sacred space marred by uncomfortable questions. So you got this guy as your protagonist, a not particularly warm and fuzzy one. And from a dramatic perspective, I guess, the story requires a villain or at least a foil, someone whose philosophy of museuming is very different from Shulan's, providing you the conflict you need as a storyteller, right? And that role fell to the museum's big boss, the CEO, Alice Greenwald.GREENWALD: The politics are the terrain we're in. And it's the, you know -- the World Trade Center has always been a complicated site. You know, it's a bi-state agency that operates, you know, an entity that, an authority that deals with transportation, but it's also building commercial buildings and, you know, a transportation center. It's going to be complicated. It's just going to be complicated.ROSENBAUM: So, Alice is charming. She's warm. She's approachable. She answers questions. She doesn't get caught up in her knitting. And from the day that we met, you know, I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. I said to her, “You're going to be the magnetic north of this story. All people on the planet that want to come and explore it are going to come here.” And she said, “We understand that. We understand that's our responsibility.”GARFIELD: And yet, she is also clearly not as keen as Shulan is in exploring, let's just say, the geopolitical nuance of 9/11. And this has something to do with curatorial philosophy, but it also has to do with this museum being both a memorial and a museum and there being a lot of stakeholders, including the families of the 2,900 plus victims of the attacks. She was politically in an awkward position because there was no way that whatever decision she made, that everybody was going to be delighted.ROSENBAUM: Well, let's go back just half a step. She came from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. So that was the bulk of her career and that was her experience. And so, you know, she's used to demanding stakeholders and people who want the story told a certain way. But the Holocaust Museum is also quite open, and in fact, allows lots of different points of views, some of which they find abhorrent. And so, I don't think she -- I don't think she brought to the museum any sense of shutting down debate or dialogue. I think that happened in an evolutionary process over time.GARFIELD: But as we see the design and construction and planning and curatorial decisions play out, there did seem to be -- you know, I hesitate to use the word whitewash, but it was there seemed to be no great effort to do what Shulan wanted, which is to ask difficult questions, even if you could not come up with a definitive answer. When did it become clear to you as a filmmaker looking at the footage that you had found the conflict that I previously described?ROSENBAUM: So, you said it exactly right. I mean, you know, people say to me, “Well, you know, did you know when you were at the museum, there was a change? Did you feel like it was shift--?” The answer is no, we didn't. And it wasn't until Pam handed me that first tape and we then took the 14 hours of Michael Shulan and laid it out end to end and watched it, that you could feel the tone changing and his kind of quizzical nature become more frustrated and then more angry by about year three. And one of the things I think that's important to remember here is there were some things that Alice was facing that are now lost in history a little bit. So, you know, they began construction in 2005, 2006. By 2008, Wall Street had collapsed. And all these people that had committed donations to build this thing took their money back. And the mayor of the city of New York, who is also the museum's chairman at that point, was Michael Bloomberg. And, you know, Michael's got no shortage of cash, but I don't think there was ever an intention that this museum was going to be a perennial money suck for him or other donors. And so, part of the drumbeat that you start to feel is, “How do we make this private museum” -- not a public museum -- “without government funding, something that people will come and buy a ticket for?” And that's, I think, where some of the rub was.GARFIELD: A twenty three dollar ticket, if I recall correctly.ROSENBAUM: They raised the price. It's now twenty six.GARFIELD: So at that point, you know, apart from any political or philosophical considerations, there becomes the problem of needing, in order to meet expenses, to have not just a shrine and not just a museum, but an attraction which changes the calculus altogether. And what you were able to do when you were combing through your footage was find some pretty upsetting scenes of museum staff trying to figure out what would make the customers react.ROSENBAUM: Yes, there was definitely a series of debates about what would be impactful. And they were always careful to never say immersive. But there definitely became a bit of a schism on the team between people that wanted the museum to be welcoming and complicated and people who wanted the museum to be intense and dramatic. And there are some good examples of that, in particular, some particular scenes that I think the museum wasn't happy to see recorded. But, you know, we had them on tape.SPEAKER 1: Do you have any interest in developing ties? You can do whatever you want on it.SPEAKER 2: I think a tie is a really — you know what's nice to give away is a tie and a scarf.NEWS REPORTER: Just days away from the public opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, there's growing criticism of high admission fees. Twenty four dollars to get in and the sale of souvenirs at the gift shop. SPEAKER 3: I think it's a revenue generating tourist attraction. NEWS REPORTER: Jim Riches shares the same sentiment shown in this New York Post headline titled “Little Shop of Horror.” ROSENBAUM: But I also think it's important for your audience to understand people don't want to re-experience 9/11. Certainly New Yorkers don't, and probably Americans as a class.GARFIELD: There was the question, and this was a word you ended up not using in your film, of whether you going through that footage were witnessing the “Disneyfication” of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, yet you ended up pulling that punch up. Why? ROSENBAUM: It made people so staggeringly angry that -- I mean, I don't think it was inaccurate or untrue. It was just we were picking our battles a little bit at that point with the museum and like, they -- because we didn't have any of our characters raising the word “Disneyfication,” although we'd heard it, we decided it was harder to defend than some other challenges that we made that were on tape.GARFIELD: You got a lot of good press for this film, but you also ran into a couple of buzzsaws, notably The New York Times Review, which was pretty scathing. And, although the critic was kind enough to single out my performance as a narrator -- what word did he use?ROSENBAUM: I believe the word was “amateurish.”GARFIELD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that was unfortunately true because I did it for nothing. But his central complaint is why you and Pam, as filmmakers, would privilege the creative vision of this novice outsider, Shulan, over the consensus of the team and the museum that they together crafted. Why did you, in the end, apart for reasons of just dramatic conflict, focus on Shulan?ROSENBAUM: Well, let me answer that question. So a couple of things: in the review, his criticism is that we're somehow promoting Shulan's career as a museum curator. And, you know, I watched the film not objectively, but I don't think anyone's going to be hiring Michael as a result of this. I also don't think that that was his intention or ours. I think, you know, what we liked was that Michael said, “Let's make a museum that's open and democratic.” And that that was the same thing Alice told us on day one. And then, as we slipped away from that, we slipped to an institution that felt to us heavy-handed and pedantic. And so, you know, Michael certainly represents a point of view that the filmmakers share about the museum. But I also think that, you know, the questions he raised about the museum, he's not alone. I mean, Tom Hennes, who's the head of Exhibits, feels very much the same way. And, you know, Philip Kennicott from The Washington Post feels very much the same way. And the head architecture critic from The New York Times, oddly, feels very much the same way. But it wasn't meant to put Shulan on any kind of a pedestal. It was simply that he was a really good lens through which to focus the question.GARFIELD: Speaking of Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic at The Times, you have some tape of him commenting on a sign that is erected, you know, in the plaza area of the museum, the above ground portion of the museum. Most of the exhibit space is below ground, which was jaw dropping for him and for, I think, any viewer of the film.KIMMELMAN: The list of don'ts on the site is astonishing. You can't sing, much less stage a protest or a demonstration. And I think that does raise some very profound questions. You know, I have to keep coming back to say, I think the ability of New York, and by extension, America, to return again to life and return this place to life would have been a very remarkable and powerful statement.GARFIELD: If one bookmark of the movie was Michael Shulan, at his open source photo exhibit in Soho, this was the other bookend: the opposite of open source democratic anything, this closing down of protest or comment or debate on this site. I mean, it's not to be believed.ROSENBAUM: You have to think about where it sits in the arc of the last twenty years in American history. I mean, you know, you got the Patriot Act, you got renditions, you've got drone strikes, you've got police being heavily armored and turning into military units. The museum's fear of terrorism was the reason why they controlled the site so closely, but it also was part of this larger shift over the last twenty years toward a nationalistic heavy-handed kind of militaristic control. And I don't think that they were out on their own when they were limiting the fact that you couldn't sing or, you know, bring a guitar or read a piece of poetry on the site. I also think, by the way, it's worth remembering that the site is private property. So there's really nowhere else in New York -- I mean, if I want to go to Central Park and read a poem, no one, no cop is going to come up and say, “I'm sorry, sir, no poetry reading here.” The only place where that's going to happen is at the September 11th Museum.GARFIELD: Now, let me ask you this final thing. You have documented what I think could be characterized as the denaturing of the 9/11 Museum, the slowly evolving whitewashing of what we described in the very beginning of this thing, which was the search for meaning in the events of that day twenty years ago. As a museum goer, will I come away with the sense that something is being withheld, or does what they have come up with provide the raw material I need as a member of the society and a citizen to ask these questions myself?ROSENBAUM: You know, I've come to be able to answer that question after a couple of months of talking to other people. I think the best answer is, you know, that they're in a really tough box at this point because the thing about, you know, Afghanistan is it's not going to go away and it will be the bookend on this twenty years that will raise questions about, “Wait a minute, is the museum not going to talk about Afghanistan and the war, the twenty year failed -- our failed war in Afghanistan?” Well, of course they have to. And then the question is, what about the twenty years between the “never forget moment” that they hit like a drum beat and now? Because lots of things happened. And theoretically, at some point, the material about Saudi Arabia that has been hidden by the government will make its way into the light and then that will raise questions about, “Oh wait, who did 9/11?” So, when you really look at what the museum has chosen to put on a pedestal, it's essentially those two towers and they're falling down and all of the horrible human pain and suffering that comes from that. But I'm not sure that counts as the appropriate historic take on that day.GARFIELD: Steve, I want to thank you very much for doing this. I'm sorry Pam couldn't join us, but thank her for me as well. And I wish you all best of luck with the film.ROSENBAUM: We love people to watch it and send us, you know, notes, criticism, feedback. We think it's the beginning of a conversation, not the end.GARFIELD: Just as Michael Shulan would have preferred. Steve, thank you. ROSENBAUM: Thanks. GARFIELD: Steve Rosenbaum with his wife, Pam Yoder, directed the new documentary “The Outsider,” available now on Apple TV, Prime Video, Vudu, Xbox, Facebook, and other digital platforms. All right, we're done here. We encourage you to become a paid subscriber to Booksmart Studios so you can get extra content, including my weekly text column from Bully Pulpit, Lexicon Valley and Banished. Meantime, do please review Bully Pulpit on iTunes. Amid a cacophonous glut of podcasts, we depend on you to bring news of us to the world. We are trying to bring unapologetic scrutiny to the world of ideas and we cannot do that without you. Thanks in advance. Bully Pulpit is produced by Mike Vuolo and Matthew Schwartz. Our theme was composed by Julie Miller and the team at Harvest Creative Services in Lansing, Michigan. Bully Pulpit is a production of Booksmart Studios. I'm Bob Garfield. Get full access to Bully Pulpit at bullypulpit.substack.com/subscribe

What's behind Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans embracing a big Biden agenda item? Infrastructure. Plus, a delightful story about a man, his hobby and his dog. Read more:The big bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate this week is being hailed as a moment of unity, with politicians from both sides of the aisle finding common ground in building roads, repairing bridges and expanding broadband technology. But the reality is a bit more complicated. Mike DeBonis reports on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's thinking behind his support of President Biden's agenda item.Along with being The Post's art and architecture critic, Philip Kennicott is also an avid piano player. The thing is, his dog hates it when he plays piano, particularly Bach's Goldberg Variations. He tries to solve the mystery of why.

Variation 30. In the last variation of the Goldbergs, Bach returns home, to a tradition of his family: creating mashups.  Interview with and performance by German pianist Lennart Felix, with additional commentary by Kristian Nyquist, Angela Hewitt, Jeremy Denk, and Philip Kennicott. Interview recorded October 24, 2017. Musical recording credits available at: https://open.spotify.com/show/0g4E7bf99tc5L6BGjkY1HG?si=xidMStfoTJWvME8MUYGK_g

India continues to set world records as it faces the worst surge in cases since the start of the pandemic. And, how two decades of war have reshaped Kabul.Read more:Coronavirus cases are surging across India, leading to mass cremations and a scramble for vaccines. Joanna Slater reports on the crisis.As U.S. troops formally withdraw from Afghanistan, Philip Kennicott and photographer Lorenzo Tugnoli look at how two decades of conflict have reshaped Kabul.If you value the journalism you hear in this podcast, please subscribe to The Washington Post. We have a deal for our listeners — one year of unlimited access to everything The Post publishes for just $29. To sign up, go to postreports.com/offer.

If the Goldbergs are a celebration of life, variation 25 is a reckoning with mortality, revealing pain but also providing comfort. In this episode, we hear from many different people, including pianist Jeremy Denk, Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott, scholar Eric Motley, pianist William Heiles, and dancer Melissa Toogood. Photo credit: Michael Wilson Musical recording credits available at https://www.thirtybach.com/podcast-episodes/far-from-home

As the National Portrait Gallery works on its latest commission -- an official portrait of former President Donald Trump -- we take a spin through the ‘America’s Presidents’ exhibition. This episode draws back the curtain on earlier commissions that have drawn controversy and acclaim: a portrait of Bill Clinton with a shadow of scandal painted into it, and the Obama portraits that transformed the museum into a pilgrimage site. Director Kim Sajet also digs into the thorny question of what a presidential portrait is meant to convey, especially if the president in question has been impeached. Should it carry the glow of prestige, or the markers of personal failings? Is this gallery hallowed ground, or a place to question power? "If you're in the business of showing these paintings," says Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott, "you want to send people out a little hungry." Also featuring former deputy director Carolyn Carr. See the portraits we discuss here: President James Buchanan President Richard Nixon President George H. W. Bush President Bill Clinton President George W. Bush President Barack Obama

Calls for Andrew Cuomo to step down grow as the New York governor faces allegations of sexual harassment from multiple women. The billionaires whose wealth ballooned during the pandemic. And, what the fencing around the Capitol means for our democracy.Read more:White House reporter Josh Dawsey discusses the controversy surrounding Cuomo and his refusal to resign.A handful of tech titans made more than $360 billion during the pandemic. Tech culture reporter Nitasha Tiku discusses how the past year is shattering the myth of the benevolent billionaire.Art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott writes that the danger of right-wing mobs is real. Fencing at the U.S. Capitol won’t help.

By 1914 Frank Lloyd Wright had become one of America's most influential architects. But that August a violent tragedy unfolded at his Midwestern residence and studio. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the shocking attack of Julian Carlton, which has been called "the most horrific single act of mass murder in Wisconsin history." We'll also admire some helpful dogs and puzzle over some freezing heat. Intro: In 1992 by Celess Antoine patented an umbrella for dogs. Ignaz Moscheles' piano piece "The Way of the World" reads the same upside down. Sources for our feature on the Taliesin killings: William R. Drennan, Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders, 2007. Ron McCrea, Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright's Home of Love and Loss, 2013. Paul Hendrickson, Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright, 2019. Meryle Secrest, Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, 1998. Anthony Alofsin, "Loving Frank; Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 69:3 (September 2010), 450-451. Christopher Benfey, "Burning Down the House," Harper's Magazine 339:2035 (December 2019), 88-94. Naomi Uechi, "Evolving Transcendentalism: Thoreauvian Simplicity in Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin and Contemporary Ecological Architecture," Concord Saunterer 17 (2009), 73-98. Jonathan Morrison, "Frank Lloyd Wright: The Giant Talent With Shaky Foundations," Times, Jan. 4, 2020, 16. Michael Prodger, "Plagued By Fire by Paul Hendrickson -- Frank Lloyd Wright, a Life of Disaster and Disarray," Guardian, Nov. 22, 2019, 14. Philip Kennicott, "He Burned Frank Lloyd Wright's House and Killed His Mistress -- But Why?", Washington Post, Nov. 22, 2019. "Monumental Achievements: Frank Lloyd Wright, an American Great Whose Life Was as Colourful as His Buildings Were Breathtaking," Sunday Times, Oct. 20, 2019, 32. John Glassie, "What Kept Wright From Running Dry?", Washington Post, Oct. 6, 2019, E.12. Ron Hogan, "The Tragic Story of Guggenheim Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Secret Love Nest," New York Post, Oct. 5, 2019. Leanne Shapton and Niklas Maak, "The House That Love Built -- Before It Was Gone," New York Times, July 4, 2016. Ron McCrea, "August, 1914: Small-Town Wisconsin Rises to the Occasion of the Taliesin Mass Murder," [Madison, Wis.] Capital Times, Aug. 14, 2014. Mara Bovsun, "Cook Massacres Seven at Wisconsin Home Frank Lloyd Wright Built for His Mistress," New York Daily News, Jan. 25, 2014. Patricia Wolff, "Tranquil Taliesin Harbors Tragic Tale," Oshkosh [Wis.] Northwestern, June 26, 2011, A.1. Ron McCrea, "Taliesin's Postcard Memories Rare Photos Reveal Scenes From Frank Lloyd Wright's Pre-Fire Dwellings," Madison [Wis.] Capital Times, March 23, 2011, 9. Marcus Field, "Architect of Desire," Independent on Sunday, March 8, 2009, 14. Robert Campbell, "House Proud: Paying Homage to Frank Lloyd Wright's Home, Taliesin East," Boston Globe, Dec. 13, 1992, 17. Image: The Taliesin courtyard after the attack and fire. Frank Lloyd Wright is at left. Listener mail: "Just Nuisance," Simonstown.com (accessed Sept. 25, 2020). Kirsten Jacobs, "The Legendary Tale of Just Nuisance," Cape Town Etc, Jan. 28, 2020. The Kitchen Sisters, "Turnspit Dogs: The Rise and Fall of the Vernepator Cur," NPR, May 13, 2014. Natalie Zarrelli, "The Best Kitchen Gadget of the 1600s Was a Small, Short-Legged Dog," Atlas Obscura, Jan. 11, 2017. "Sewing Machine Worked by a Dog," Futility Closet, Oct. 16, 2011. "Turnspit Dogs," Futility Closet, Nov. 10, 2006. Wikipedia, "Newfoundland (dog)," accessed Sept. 24, 2020. Stanley Coren, "The Dogs of Napoleon Bonaparte," Psychology Today, March 8, 2018. "Beach Rescue Dog Alerts Swimmer," BBC News, 23 August 2007. Adam Rivera, David Miller, Phoebe Natanson, and Andrea Miller, "Dogs Train Year-Round to Save Lives in the Italian Waters," ABC News, April 2, 2018. Tom Kington, "Italy's Lifesaving Dogs Swim Towards Foreign Shores," Times, March 10, 2020, 31. "Italy's Canine Lifeguards," NDTV, Aug. 23, 2010 (contains several photos). Anna Gragert, "Newfoundland Dogs Help the Italian Coast Guard Save Lives," My Modern Met, Aug. 5, 2015 (contains several photos). This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Garth Payne, who sent this corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

The famous black contralto singer Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, after being denied the ability to perform down the street at Constitution Hall. And when she did, she transformed the monument into something more than a stone temple to Abraham Lincoln. She ushered in its new life as an active place for generations of Americans to continue the work to“bind up the nation’s wounds.”Hosted by Washington Post journalist Lillian Cunningham, the podcast episode features experts Molefi Kete Asante, head of the African American Studies Department at Temple University; Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”; and Post architecture critic Philip Kennicott.This is a special episode of the “Presidential” podcast series. In 44 chronological episodes, the “Presidential” podcast took listeners on an epic historical journey through the personality and legacy of each of the American presidents. Created and hosted by Lillian Cunningham, “Presidential” features interviews with the country’s greatest experts on the presidency, including Pulitzer Prize-winning biographers, historians and journalists. The full “Presidential” series is available to listen to here. Start listening at the very beginning, with the life of George Washington, or jump ahead to any president whose story you want to better understand.

What being a working mom is like during a pandemic from Helena Andrews-Dyer. And how learning Bach could be an expression of grief from Philip Kennicott.Read more:This Mother’s Day, stories of women balancing careers and kids concede that thriving is out of reach. Surviving is enough in the time of the coronavirus.How one reporter found solace in Bach after losing his mother.Subscribe to The Washington Post: https://postreports.com/offer

Though we were unable to host our March Seriously Entertaining show live at Joe's Pub due to the coronavirus, we wanted to share these original stories prepared by our March speakers, tied to the theme "As Good as Gold." This episode features Anne Nelson, journalist and author of the new book Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right examining the 2016 election, how it went unpredictably wrong, and what religious radio shows in the Midwest had to do with it; artist, activist, and author of the new book Stop Telling Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We’re Taking Back Our Power, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh sharing how her art expresses who she is as a woman…a woman who isn’t always polite; and Philip Kennicott,Washington Post art and architecture critic and author of Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning talking about finding Nathan, the greatest dog in the world…except for Nathan’s one significant flaw. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In zijn onlangs verschenen; ‘De Goldbergvariaties, een verhaal over Bach en rouw’ noemt de schrijver Philip Kennicott de muziek van Bach ‘de enige muziek die niet triviaal is, muziek die helpt de nabijheid van de dood te ondergaan en zich ermee te verzoenen’. In het eerste deel van Kennicott’s boek gaat het oa over de Chaconna uit de Tweede Partita. Johann Sebastian Bach Fantasie, BWV.944 Andrew Lawrence-King, barokharp DHM 05472775232 1’46’’ Johann Sebastian Bach Partita nr.2, BWV.1004; V. Chaconna Andrew Lawrence-King, barokharp DHM 05472775232 17’34’’

IN DEPTH: The Embassy of France was deeply touched by the numerous messages of support received after the tragedy that hit the iconic Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral. Philip Kennicott, Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic of The Washington Post and Johann Vexo, organist for the choir organ at Notre-Dame cathedral, share their thoughts on why it moved hearts everywhere.

Philip Kennicott envisions Notre Dame’s reconstruction. Abby Ohlheiser reports on the resurfacing of Internet conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. And Emily Yahr talks about the Backstreet Boys and their hit single “I Want It That Way.”

Should arts organizations accept money from the Koch brothers? Art critic Philip Kennicott weighs in. Plus, Oscar-winning director Errol Morris talks about interviewing Elsa Dorfman and Donald Trump. And Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein share music that inspired their new album.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Protests in the concert hall are nothing new: think of the riot-inducing premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in 1913 or the backlash at the 1861 premiere of Wagner's Tannhauser. Recently, protesters for a variety of causes have picketed the Metropolitan Opera, the Israel Philharmonic and the Valery Gergiev's Mariinsky Orchestra, among others. It happened again on Oct. 4 at a St. Louis Symphony concert, when a group of demonstrators protesting the police shooting of Michael Brown began to sing, chant and unfurl banners from the balcony, moments before the Brahms Requiem. Beyond the sensational headlines, is there something deeper at play? And can a political demonstration actually shed light on the music that audiences have paid money to hear? Our experts thought so. They are: Sarah Bryan Miller, Classical music critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who witnessed the St. Louis Symphony protest. Philip Kennicott, Art and architecture critic of The Washington Post Kenneth Woods, a conductor, cellist and author of the blog, "A View from the Podium." Some highlights of the podcast: Concert halls can either be an inappropriate forum for demonstrations or "a vehicle for creating empathy and connection." How a 1968 protest at a Mstislav Rostropovich performance made a powerful statement about the Prague Spring. Why "music is most effective and engaging with political challenges when we step beyond politics and look at the universal human ideas." Listen to the full podcast above and tell us in the comments below: Have you ever witnessed a demonstration in a concert that was effective or ineffective?

Photography Changes Everything, a new book from the Smithsonian and the Aperture Foundation, uses the visual assets of the museum to explore how photographs impact our culture and our lives. Join Marvin Heiferman, editor, David Griffin, Visuals Editor of the Washington Post, Bruce Hoffman, director of security studies at Georgetown University; Philip Kennicott, art and architecture critic of the Washington Post; and other guests, for a discussion moderated by Merry Foresta, founding director of the SI Photography Initiative.

When times are tough, a lot of arts groups go for the sure thing. For orchestras, that means a Beethoven symphony cycle over Schoenberg or Cage. For an opera house, it's Carmen and La Boheme over a risky modern opera. But some companies think differently. In the face of all its hardships, New York City Opera planned a season that includes J.C. Bach's Endimione, Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, and the U.S. premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole – hardly proven audience bate. So what’s the proper balance? Does safe programming equal more "butts in seats?" Or do you need to take risks, even in tough times? Philip Kennicott, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic of the Washington Post, tells host Naomi Lewin that arts organizations often get into trouble by neglecting more serious-minded audiences in an effort to chase niche listeners. "Orchestras very often think that their audience falls into two categories: there's a conservative, old audience that only wants Beethoven and Mozart and Haydn, and then there is this ideal audience that’s interested in everything," he said. "I argue that there is another audience out there." Kennicott recently wrote an article for The New Republic, in which he chastised orchestras for an over-reliance on star soloists, a handful of over-familiar concertos, and a cookie-cutter mix of "special events" – video game music, crossover tenors, Broadway crooners and movie screenings. Lost in this mix, Kennicott tells Lewin, is the listener who is "open to new pieces, open to obscure pieces, interested still in the traditional repertoire. The panic response of reflexively programming familiar works that you see in orchestras actually doesn’t serve the serious listener very well." Krishna Thiagarajan, the executive director of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, notes that many orchestras don't want to take risks with unfamiliar programming because "the funding isn’t there to back it up," he said. "When you’re being very creative and breaking the mold, you have to know that’s an area where you have to invest.” By investment, Thiagarajan means that an orchestra must take the long view and condition audiences to leave their comfort zone. As an example, he points to Esa-Pekka Salonen's tenure as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2009, where he premiered 120 works, including 54 commissions. "If you initially get a poor reaction from your audience, if you pull back you won’t know what the full effect was," he said. Marc Scorca, president of Opera America, a national service organization, says there are no surefire hits anymore. "There are fewer and fewer safe pieces," he said. "Operas that used to be reliable box office producers are no longer pulling the way they used to." Scorca adds that he's seen an audience fatigue with La Traviatas and Carmens, whereas new works can energize an organization and create excitement. To some observers, the performing arts are mirroring the homogenization of mass media and popular culture as a whole. "There is something going on in this country at large, and what we’re seeing in the arts scene is a symptom," Thiagarajan cautioned. But Kennicott is more optimistic. "I think there are audiences out there," he said. “I call them countercultural audiences that are really eager for stuff that doesn’t fit that homogenized cultural model. That’s the great hope of any organization that’s producing live art.” Listen to the full discussion in the audio link above and take our poll below: .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "classical-music-programming", "survey_classical-music-programming");