Allison Lichter

West African musicians honored the memory of Africans buried in lower Manhattan in the 17th and 18th centuries. The band held an afternoon concert as part of the African Burial Ground's Black History Month Celebration. The room ...

New York, NY —

When the stimulus bill passed on Friday it included an additional $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, and some New York-based arts groups should receive a boost from the funds. Randall Borsheidt is director of Alliance for the Arts, a New York ...

A brightly-gilded Beacon Theater re-opens today, with a brand new sound system and a restored canvas mural in the Neo-classical rotunda. When the Beacon first opened in 1928, it was host to New York's vaudeville acts. ...

New York, NY —

The 133rd annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show opened this morning at Madison Square Garden.

And the talk at this year’s event is not just about the dogs in the competition.

It's also about dogs in the white house. Westminster Kennel Club spokesman David Frei has a ...

New York, NY —

Last week, Harlem's Apollo Theatre celebrated the 75th anniversary of its amateur night competition. Since the 1930s, the event has launched the careers of some of the world’s greatest entertainers from Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown to the Jackson Five. The theater’s in-house historian, Billy ...

New York, NY —

Well before this recession, the news media started bleeding jobs. Lately, film critics have been especially vulnerable to layoffs, at publications including Variety, the Village Voice and Time Out. But WNYC’s Allison Lichter spoke with one New York film reviewer who just may have figured ...

New York, NY —

Well before this recession, the news media started bleeding jobs. Lately, film critics have been especially vulnerable to layoffs, at publications including Variety, the Village Voice and Time Out. But film critic Mike D'Angelo has figured out a way to keep watching movies, and getting ...

I grew up on a well-intentioned, but deeply damaging, diet of show tunes and folk songs, with a little light classical mixed in. The soundtracks to John Hughes movies really pushed my musical boundaries. 'Nuff said.

But I was humble, and willing to learn (so much so that I now ...

New York, NY —

A new exhibition of drawings at the Metropolitan Museum offers a glimpse into the process behind masterworks of western painting.

Spanning the Renaissance to the early 20th Century, the show features sketches and studies by artists including Raphael Fragonard, Goya, Degas, Renoir and van Gogh.

Carmen Bambach, ...

WNYC culture reporter Siddhartha Mitter and Evening Music host Terrance McKnight talk about the cultural significance of the inauguration live from the National Mall in Washington. 

The Brian Lehrer Show’s special coverage of the presidential inauguration.

New York, NY —

A Wal-Mart sponsored dance company is flourishing in New York's struggling economy. The Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet is one of the few companies that brings in work by foreign artists, such as Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman. It's Veldman's first time working with American dancers, who ...

New York, NY —

A new study confirms the city's arts organizations are hurting in this economy as much as everyone else. WNYC's Allison Lichter has more:

REPORTER: The Alliance for the Arts conducted the study and the group's president Randall Bourscheidt, said that one of the surprising results was ...

New York, NY —

The new senior minister of New York's historic Riverside Church Brad Braxton is taking issue with president-elect Obama's selection of Rick Warren to lead the inauguration's invocation.

On WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show, Braxton says disagrees with Warren's position against gay marriage. He says Obama should be ...

New York, NY —

At the Public Theater, the hip hop artist Danny Hoch recently put gentrification on stage in his show called "Taking Over." A similar project has been in development by the theater company The Civilians.

Their project is called "Brooklyn at Eye Level." It brings performers together ...

New York, NY —

Broadway will dim its lights tonight at seven in memory of a giant of New York theater – Gerald Schoenfeld, a New York native and theater impresario died today. WNYC's Allison Lichter has more.

REPORTER: From "A Chorus Line" to "Ain’t Misbehavin" to this year’s ...

New York, NY —

In the early 80s, Ray Mortenson photographed the empty buildings that dominated landscape of the South Bronx. The images showed the social and economic devastation of the period. These photos are now on display at the Museum of the City of New York in a ...

New York, NY —

President elect Barack Obama -- with his Kenyan-born Father and American mother -- has brought the centuries old connections between Africa and America back into the spotlight. A dance collaboration underway at BAM right now also highlights those transatlantic links. WNYC's Allison Lichter has this ...

New York, NY —

The Baryshnikov Arts Center is expanding into a 299 seat theater it purchased right next to the space it currently occupies in Hell’s Kitchen.

New York, NY —

It's not cheap -- almost $180 -- but the set is an exhaustive assortment of material, including films like the classics Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, along with shorts, web videos, deleted scenes and even a so-called "mystery disc."

WNYC film critic Nathan Lee talked to the ...