New York Times

I look to a painting on my wall by the 17th century Dutch painter, Pieter de Hooch. It is a domestic scene of a mother calmly peeling turnips in a corner while a child enters the threshold carrying a flask and a plate, smiling down at a little dog looking up in anticipation. I am relieved.

Howard Cruse was a pioneering gay cartoonist and Berkshire neighbor. He passed away last year. His legendary Stuck Rubber Baby is having its 25th anniversary edition. The publication will be available this summer.

The 2020 Bang on a Can Marathon will feature more than 40 participating artists, over two dozen solo performances, and four world premieres of newly commissioned works by Dai Wei, Shara Nova, Molly Joyce, and Ken Thomson. Guest composers will be online to introduce their works. The 6-hour live Marathon will be hosted by Bang on a Can Co-Founders and Artistic Directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe.

“This virus might get to tell us what we cannot do but it does not get to dictate what we can do,” Mandy Greenfield said. “The voices of these artists will be heard. Through this alliance with Audible, we keep artists and the generative artistic process centered and steady through this unspeakably difficult moment when public gathering simply isn’t possible"

Most of us are now hunkered down and isolated, inundated by 24/7 news coverage of depressing medical and economic conditions, compounded by failed White House leadership. To lighten our burden, just a bit, here is a list, with thumbnail reviews, of nine excellent documentary films about architecture and design.

Prolific playwright Terrence McNally loses his battle with coronavirus. McNally was an American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee. The prolific writer also won five Tony Awards.

The Williamstown Theatre Festival launches with Streetcar Named Desire starring Audra McDonald on June 30. The season will feature five world premieres.

Barrington Stage Company will present two World Premiere musicals and new productions of a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical classic, a Tony Award-winning musical revue, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning play. BSC will also perform outdoors for the first time with free performances of one of the company’s World Premiere musicals and featuring the company’s popular Youth Theatre.

American Son is a gripping tragedy about race in America today. Chistopher Demos-Brown's piece is a multi-faceted play in which marital, paternal and racial conflicts collide. A quartet of actors present impressively natural performances. American Son runs through Jan. 26 in Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center.

The conventional wisdom is that everyone is a critic. Which is an insult to those of us who pursue the difficult and complex craft. Why on earth would I give a fig about the year end movie list of former president Obama? I don't dabble in politics or take up brain surgery as a hobby. Having an opinion, and posting on social media, does not make you a critic.

Can there be too much of a good thing? Barrington Stage Company is known for staging classical musicals. But now Ain't Misbehavin has been added to South Pacific. This seems more about the bottomline than balanced programming. The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg is the third high season production on the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage. Anna in the Tropics, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Nilo Cruz, will highlight the St. Germain Stage.

Located in the belly of the beast the annual Anerican Theatre Critics Association New York conferences consistently feature superb programming. The best and brightest of American theatre are as accessible as a phone call and cab ride away. This year a day of panels were held for some 60 national members and guests at the new MCC theatre complex. Where else can you encounter a Pulitzer winning playwright interviewed by a fellow Pulitzer Prize winner. The panels. convened from 9 to 5, were varied, provactive and galvanic.

Jazz entrepreneur Fred Taylor has passed at 90. He never retired producing concerts and programming for the Cabot Theatre in Beverly. Not surprisingly his yet to be published autobiography, a collaboration with Richard Vacca, is titled What and Quit Show Business. Taylor booked Boston's Jazz Workshop/ Paul’s Mall from 1963 to 1978. From 1991 to 2017 he booked Scullers Jazz Club and produced the Tanglewood Jazz Festival from 2001 to 2007.

The Swiss dealer, Bruno Bischofberger commissioned a collaboration between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol as well as Francesco Clemente. The project with Clemente fizzled by thrived with the other two artists. The dealer would purchase between sixty and eighty of their works together. The project wasn't completed but eight works from the series are on view at The School in Kinderhook New York. There are some hundred works by the artists on view, Saturdays, through early September.

About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a spontaneous rebellion by gay activists after a police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Curated by Jonathan David Katz, Ph.D., activist, art historian, writer and university professor, the exhibit features almost 500 works of art in every conceivable media.

During a recent road trip we visited museums in Montreal, Ottowa and Toronto. We noted different strategies to intergate First Nations artists into special exhibitions and permanent collection galleries. A third of the exhibition space of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto features First Nations artists. With an unfavorable comparison only a handful of American museums have a commitment to feature Native American art and culture.

The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan conveys how families are torn apart coping with and caring for elders with dementia. In a downward spiral Gladys Green, in another stunning performance by Annette Miller, is struggling to hold on. A small Greenwich Village vanity gallery gives her something to do. In a bold move Shakespeare & Company has launched its season with a slow and demanding drama.

Occupying a former municipal structure, since 1987, The Power Plant in Toronto has been a renowned presenter of Canadian and global contemporary art. We visited during the final days of three solo exhibitions: “Same Dream” by Omar Ba a Senegalese artist who divides time between Dakar and Geneva, Switzland. Shuvinai Ashoona, a member of a renowned family of Inuit artists, presented “Mapping Worlds.” For twenty years, Alicia Henry, a graduate of Yale, has resided in Nashville, Tennessee where she teaches at Fisk University. Her show was titled "Witnessing."

On May 25, come for MASS MoCA’s 20th birthday blowout that spreads across the museum campus to encompass new exhibitions, art-infused versions of your favorite games, live music by performers from both near and far, great food, and a world of fun. The day’s events kick off with An Afternoon of Conversation & Song with Annie Lennox at 4pm, a rare solo-acoustic performance to benefit the Annie Lennox Foundation (as well as MASS MoCA’s Fund for New Music).

A book of interviews by Dutch art historian Marta Gynp "You Me and Art: Artists in the 21st Century" is lively, eclectic and informative. Of the twenty individuals she interacts with some are well known and others less so. In several instances what artists had to say about their work changed how I respond to it. In an engaging and familiar manner she was able to get behind the facade to probe intimate thoughts and insecurities. That approach reveals a humanistic view of how work evolves from studios to galleries and museums.

The Oldcastle Theatre season in Bennington, Vermont starts on June 7 with Red by John Logan. The 48th season features four plays through October 20.

Lyric Stage Company of Boston announces its 45th season. The program of seven plays starts with a yet to be announced award winning musical from August 30 to October 6. The suspense is brutal.

Huntington Theatre Company announces the lineup of the 2019-2020 season, featuring three world premieres, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a classic Tony Award-winning comedy by one of the world’s most celebrated playwrights, and two adaptations of powerful literary works.

The Warhol exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art leads you through the commercial illustrations, personal drawings, paintings, prints, photos, silkscreens, films, videos, music production, his Factory years and more. The last galleries show his giant Mao painting, works in collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the 35-foot mural titled Camouflage Last Supper 1986, a rendition of the Last Supper under camouflage print.

On March 7 the documentary film WBCN and the American Revolution will have a sneak preview at the DC Film Festival. On March 9, 12 and 13 there will be screenings at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose. A world premiere is being planned for Boston in April. The day after wrapping the film Bill Lichtenstein discussed the project which started in 2006. The story of WBCN is set against events from the launch of the radical FM station in 1968 to developments surrounding the resignation of Richard Nixon seven years later.