Annette Marsland has done a difficult thing: In her suite of prints, Straightening the Tower, focusing on one of architecture’s most iconic buildings, she has successfully appropriated images from art history and popular culture, and interwoven high-art theory with European civic history to create a body of work both serious and playful. A few of […]
Kate Dobbs Ariail
Bio: Kate Dobbs Ariail writes about the arts.
Posted inArt
Concrete Jungle
Iván Castellón comes from Cochabamba, Bolivia, but he paints about a problem residents of the Triangle are coming to know all too well: the mutual incompatibility of a growing urban population with the survival of the animals that previously inhabited the land. Castellón’s paintings on this theme form part of his exhibition Bolivian Park at […]
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Past and Future Tense
David Simonton moved to North Carolina on July 7, 1989from Ellis Island. That is, the New Jersey photographer had just completedalong with many othersan intense 10 months of taking photographs for a project documenting the buildings and grounds where so many immigrants entered America. While working there, Simonton found his calling as a poet of […]
Posted inGuides
Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
If you’ve ever been to Florence, or seen a picture of Florence, or have an interest in the Italian Renaissance, you will be familiar with the iconic dome of the Florentine cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore. This enormous dome swells above its sprightly, patterned church at the very heart of the city, and epitomizes the […]
Posted inGuides
St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation/Hayti Heritage Center
When the cornerstone was laid for St. Joseph AME Church 110 years ago, that church was already a historic institution. In 1868, the Rev. Edian Markum (later Markham), an African Methodist Episcopal missionary, came to Durham to preach. He bought land in the area that 10 years later would be known as Hayti, and established […]
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Art on a Budget
Gov. Mike Easley’s election brought a change at the top of the state Department of Cultural Resources (DCR), which oversees a host of important institutions for the arts and humanities, including the N.C. Museum of Art, the state Arts Council, the N.C. Symphony, the State Library, the Division of Archives and History, and the N.C. […]
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Mystery Maven
Margaret Maron is a state treasure. Since she returned to her Johnston County home after many years in Washington, New York and Italy, this writer of witty mysteries has also become a sharp-eyed chronicler of this region. In her series featuring Judge Deborah Knott, Maron holds her word-mirror to our fast-changing state, and measures the […]
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A Flower Grows in Five Points
When I first moved to my home in downtown Durham, the property’s tiny area of pavement between the city parking lot and the building was pretty desolate. Empty Wild Irish Rose bottles were the only flowers blooming amid the few puny weeds that poked up through the cracks. I couldn’t stand that: I’ve got to […]
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Great Wall-Marted
A person has hardly been able to turn around without hearing the word “multiculturalism” in the last several years. But no matter whether you think a multicultural society is a priority to be promoted, or something to be resisted, multiculturalism is here to stay. In the Triangle, the most noticeable change has been the enormous […]
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Second Glances
Sometimes I think if I see one more photograph described as “eloquent,” I will just run in the opposite direction. Fortunately, I had seen some of William Gedney’s photographs before I read that description of them, so I did go to see the new exhibition of his work at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies (CDS). […]