Brown University

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Breaking down the cost of Brown; birth control mirth; business as usual

Hill hiking
Mayor Angel Taveras and Brown University are locked in a nasty fight over upping the school's payments to the city. And the university's governing board has announced it will hike tuition and fees by 3.5 percent next year.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | February 15, 2012

‘Taoist Gods’ and ‘Immortals’ at Brown and RISD

The language of aesthetics
As China marked the beginning of the Year of the Dragon with lion and dragon dances and fireworks last week, Brown University's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology was debuting "Taoist Gods from China: Ceremonial Paintings from the Mien".
By GREG COOK | January 31, 2012

The Providence Postcard Project: Love letters to a city

Missives
The Big Blue Bug is here.
By PHILIP EIL | February 01, 2012

Smell and the evolution of disgust

The Senses
"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will," Peter Süskind writes in his psychological thriller, Perfume (1985).
By MAGGIE LANGE | January 18, 2012

Shows worth seeing in the new year

Eyes wide open
From centuries-old Taoist visions to the ways technology can channel emotions, local exhibits this winter prompt comparisons between then and now.
By GREG COOK | December 28, 2011

Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium’s Parade

An unfortunate man
Parade might be the best musical, as well as the most unlikely one, that you've never seen. Its one-line plot description isn't exactly alluring.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 07, 2011

“Nostalgia Machines” at Brown’s Bell Gallery

Reconsidering the future
Jonathan Schipper's Measuring Angst (2009) might be a complicated machine built to help you ponder whether your life would be better if you could take back the stupid thing you did last night.
By GREG COOK | November 21, 2011

A feisty Lady Windermere’s Fan at Brown

Social insecurity
Late 19th-century England may have imprisoned, ostracized, and fatally broke the health of Oscar Wilde, but not before he took up his pen and successfully dueled with British hypocrisy in several successful social satires.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 08, 2011

Cai Guo-Qiang, “Sustainable Beauty,” and “Independents”

Quick impressions
Cai Guo-Qiang has mounted his two big crocodiles at head height, where you can peer into their snapped open jaws lined with fangs.
By GREG COOK | October 25, 2011

With Occu-Stock, a movement seeks direction

Futures
Occupy Providence has only just begun to sink its roots into the dusty turf of Burnside Park. But already, there is talk of what comes next.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | October 26, 2011

Conservative donors eagerly fund Brown University's Political Theory Project

Ideological tug-of-war
Last month on a bright fall day, hundreds of Brown University students spurned sun and Frisbee for a debate on the constitutionality of President Obama's health care reform law.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | October 12, 2011

A few great places to go when you want to look great

Altered images
You're new to town and you want to get all dolled up for that lecture on cognitive linguistics. What to do?
By ELIZABETH RAU | September 27, 2011

FirstWorks’ eighth annual “Pixilerations”

Balancing act: tech and art
Rebecca Mushtare's StoryQuilt invites you to sit at a faux sewing machine and tell it a story, which the Mount Kisco, New York, artist's software converts into a virtual quilt that is projected on the wall above.
By GREG COOK | September 27, 2011

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A British invasion and the local hall of fame

Autumn offerings
The art season follows the school year.
By GREG COOK | September 14, 2011

Sex and jealousy, Rhode Island-style

The Big Screen
Francesca Gregorini, co-director of the film Tanner Hall , which was shot in Rhode Island and opens here this week, drove a vintage Porsche while she was a student at Brown University . . . or so I had read. I asked her whether this was true.
By AMY LITTLEFIELD | September 14, 2011

Brown’s “Building Expectation” showcases architectural visions

Back to the future
One of the curious things about the future, as Nathaniel Robert Walker observes, is that "nearly everyone can recognize the place where no one has been." It's all clean, efficient, gleaming metal and glass skyscrapers; pervasive digital technology; and flying cars. And, it turns out, it's a vision that has been with us for a century.
By GREG COOK | September 14, 2011

Crispin Glover’s “Big Slide Show” comes to town

Hellion on wheels
Crispin Glover made a career out of being the weirdly jittery guy in big, loud movies like Hot Tub Time Machine and Back to the Future . But it's what he did with that career that's bringing him to Providence.
By ROB TURBOVSKY | September 12, 2011

The artist who stayed behind

Olneyville Stories
I meet Peter Glantz in front of the faded Atlantic Mills complex in Olneyville and we walk around back.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | August 25, 2011

Emotions run high at the Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep

Love and misery
Summer brings the annual trio of productions by Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep. Love is the common theme of this year's plays — love and its soulmate misery, it goes without saying.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | July 26, 2011

Review: Theater of Thought's Executor

Mediocre mystery
Producer, director, and actor Amber Kelly's Theater of Thought likes to take audiences by the imaginations and thrust them into the actual locations of plays they are watching.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | July 05, 2011

Review: ''Among the Breakage'' scratches the surface at Bell Gallery

An incomplete picture
Over the past dec-ade, Providence art has been known for its visionary printmaking and graphics, crafty constructions, and funhouse installations, but local painting has tended to operate out of the limelight.
By GREG COOK | June 28, 2011

Review: Leitzel and Billings at AS220; and ''Creative Collective''

Light and dark
In Marc Leitzel's sharply real scratchboard drawings in AS220's main gallery (115 Empire Street, Providence, through June 25), he depicts a tense moment between a couple in bed, a wind-blown woman wrapped in a cape, and a woman with tree branches and leaves bound up in her hair and opossums or rodents peeking out from the leaves.
By GREG COOK | June 14, 2011

The challenge: redesign the coastline

Water Dept.
We relate to shorelines reactively — we structure ports around jagged edges, avoid dangerous cliffs and fret that climate change will result in Hawaiian islands going the way of Atlantis.
By NICOLE FRIEDMAN | June 08, 2011

StoryCorps lands in Rhode Island

Audio Dept.
Listen: Muriel Mackie patrolled Pawtucket in a white helmet and whistle during World War II.
By AMY LITTLEFIELD | June 01, 2011

The Bard goes green

Shakespeare's Enchanted World
Hark ye, eco-warriors, bearers of the canvas tote! Today's greenies could learn a thing or two from a country-bred Englishman who lived before automobiles and oil spills — William Shakespeare.
By AMY LITTLEFIELD | May 25, 2011