On “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

4 days ago · On “St. Francis between Cimabue and Perugino” at the Palazzo della Minerva, Rome.

Orphic obscurity by Karen Wilkin On “Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930,” at the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

New to The New Criterion? Become a subscriber to receive ten print issues and gain immediate access to our online archive spanning more than four decades of art and cultural criticism.On The Gulag Archipelago at fifty.

Democracy—the word itself means “people (demos) power (kratos)”—originated in late sixth-century Athens through the reforms of Cleisthenes. The Athenian popular leader transferred political power from the traditional tribal clans to the general Assembly of citizens. What followed, however, was a historic but insidious growth in power of …

Dec 30, 2024 · Elizabeth Eck on a recent concert of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Dima Slobodeniouk.

Jan 1, 2025 · Jay Nordlinger on a new production of Verdi’s “Aida” at the Metropolitan Opera.

Editors’ note: The following is an edited version of remarks delivered for The New Criterion’s sixth annual Circle Lecture on September 26, 2024. O ve r the last six decades, a certain phrase has metastasized and become such a cliché that it has been used to describe all the following things and more: the coronavirus pandemic, Republican moderates, neoliberalism, January 6, …

The New Criterion, edited by Roger Kimball, was founded in 1982 by the art critic Hilton Kramer and the pianist and music critic Samuel Lipman. A monthly review of the arts and intellectual life, The New Criterion began as an experiment in critical audacity—a publication devoted to engaging, in Matthew Arnold’s famous phrase, with “the …

Nov 25, 2024 · On a concert of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, under Klaus Mäkelä, at Carnegie Hall.