Artist Kris Perry’s 35-Foot-Tall “Mother Earth” Sculpture at Rockaway Beach

A new, architectural commission from NYC Parks' Art in the Parks program

A towering new Corten steel sculpture adds to the allure of NYC‘s Rockaway Beach—the seaside strip of Queens that appeases the appetite of surfers and city folk eager for days beside the ocean. Known as “Mother Earth,” the monumental work from Hudson-based sculptor Kris Perry rises 35 feet in an angular, architectural gesture; one that invites viewers to step inside and wonder or reconsider their …

BlackStar Film Festival Celebrates BIPOC Filmmakers

From three drive-in screenings (Be Water, The Forty-Year-Old Version and Miss Juneteenth) at Philadelphia’s Mann Center to the online presentation of more than 90 films and live panels, the BlackStar Film Festival returns for its ninth installment from 20 to 26 August. Founded by Maori Karmael Holmes as a platform for independent work by Black filmmakers, the festival does more than screen groundbreaking work from BIPOC …

The Sifter Catalogues 5,000 Historic Cookbooks

For more than 50 years, Barbara Ketcham Wheaton—now an honorary curator of Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library Culinary Collection—chronicled European and US cookbooks published over the last 1,000 years. With the help of a team of scholars (including two of her children), Wheaton launched this database—called The Sifter—in July of this year. This publicly available database isn’t a recipe collection; rather, it’s “a repository of entire …