A design for a memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the National Mall has become the subject of controversy.  The New York Times reports that descendants of Eisenhower complain that Frank Gehry's design, which represents the president as a young farm boy, belittles his legacy of ...

This month, light and space is oddly, magically graspable at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea, New York. Doug Wheeler's SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 is an experience that is near-impossible to describe without using the terms "defies comprehension" and "mind-blowing," so we figured we'd get that out of the way now ...

The Scene: San Diego
From Culture Lust, a blog from KPBS in San Diego, hosted by arts and culture producer Angela Carone.

Along dusty Highway 111 in Niland, California, the Buckshot Deli and Diner is the place to get a strong cup of coffee, and directions to the area’s most famous landmark. Owner Ed Brashear says he can tell immediately who wants to go to Salvation Mountain. "Sometime when they walk in ...

The Scene: San Antonio
From Texas Public Radio's The Source, a weekly program on the arts, environment, politics, and education in San Antonio, hosted by Eileen Pace.

Last week, a silent film was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar for the first time in 85 years.  The last time that happened was at the first Academy Awards ceremony, and the picture that won was Wings (1927), shot in San Antonio. Wings is the story of two young men who enlist ...

The Sons of the Pioneers pioneered one of the strangest branches of American music: singing cowboys.  Their 1934 song “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” made popular by a Gene Autry film of the same name, was written by Bob Nolan, a Canadian by birth who ...

Bruce Springsteen's album Wrecking Ball comes out March 6. A recent press announcement supplied a track list of eleven hardscrabble-titled songs. We've come up with our own list of ten real song titles mixed up with ten ringers.  Can you pick the titles that Bruce wrote?

The Scene: Dallas
From KERA's Art & Seek, an online resource for arts, music, and culture in North Texas.

The past two years, so many arts groups in North Texas have had to find new directors, managing directors and CEOs that people have wondered if there was something wrong — with the Arts District? With Dallas in general? It’s not an Arts District problem, not a North Texas problem. It’s an ...

Like any other talented photographer, Bernardo Cesare combines skilled use of lenses and light with his own judgment and timing to capture striking images. His photographs investigate the history of the earth and expose the mysteries of its formation. His work fits into a tiny niche in the ...

A couple months ago, a friend sent me a link to a web series called The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, calling it “one of the few pieces of media I've seen that claims it's catering to 'indie-minded' black girls and actually nails it.” That’s a tall order, ...

The Scene: Baltimore
From WYPR's The Signal, a weekly radio magazine devoted to Maryland's cultural scene, hosted by Andy Bienstock.

David Silverman’s got a collection of almost 900 pinball machines, and he’s just opened the National Pinball Museum in downtown Baltimore.  We drop in at the museum for a crash course in pinball history. 

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, just arrived in theaters.  It's an adaptation of the September 11-themed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. But before Foer became a novelist, he was an aspiring sculptor. ...

Angelina Jolie may be the most tattooed actress in Hollywood. She has the coordinates of her children’s birthplaces on her arm, a Buddhist Pali incantation on her shoulder blade, a cross on her hip, a rune on her wrist, a tiger on her lower back ... Jolie recently ...

This year, Kurt talked to movie stars, revolutionaries, and polymaths — and he hosted the first-ever audio broadcast in 3D. Intriguing things often happened before the mic is switched on and the story continues after it's switched off. The Studio 360 staff ...

There is no shortage of 2011 year-end playlists, but few are as trustworthy as what's currently on David Byrne's iPod. The former Talking Heads front man sat down with Kurt Andersen this week to talk about the new Talking Heads: Chronology DVD, a collection of rare ...

Christmas starts earlier every year, and perhaps the wreaths and peppermint mochas have you rolling your eyes. If so, too bad! It’ll be over soon enough, so light a pine-scented candle, set your Pandora to "Jingle Bells," and dig in to the Studio 360 Christmas archive. ...

This morning, TIME announced 2011's Person of the Year: The Protester. Studio 360's own Kurt Andersen wrote the cover story, and was sworn to secrecy so we were just as surprised as everyone else. But in retrospect, we probably could have seen it coming. We’ve been covering the art ...

The press calls it the "God particle," about to be discovered by a "doomsday machine." Hyperbole aside, this morning at 8am EST, scientists operating the Large Hadron Collider on the Franco-Swiss border announced their biggest finding yet related to the elusive Higgs boson particle. Two independent teams of ...

Elliott Carter might be the hardest working man in classical music today. Having turned 103 over the weekend, he’s certainly the oldest. The composer is celebrating his latest birthday by premiering several new pieces, five of which were performed last week. The festivities continue tonight when Julliard's AXIOM ensemble performs ...

Since Kit White and I met when I was a freshman in college, I've just realized that means we've been friends for two-thirds of our lives. He is pretty much the same person he was then: philosophically serious but funny and fun, learned, lucid, wise, and a painter ...