business

Linda Williams, a trailblazing scholar whose research was foundational to the field of film studies and to feminist film theory, and who wrote extensively about pornography, died on March 12 at her home in Lafayette, in Northern California. She was 78. Her husband, Paul Fitzgerald, said the cause was complications of a hemorrhagic stroke she … Read more

Raul De Lara’s Transcendent Takes on Household Things The Mexican-born, Ridgewood, Queens-based sculptor Raul De Lara is aware of the irony of his choice of medium: wood. The most rooted of materials is a contrast to the precarity of his upbringing — he came to Texas at 12 with his parents, and remains here under … Read more

Mr. Chamberlain made his film debut in “The Secret of the Purple Reef” (1960), a crime drama set in the Caribbean. He agreed to exploit his Kildare image by playing a young doctor in “Joy in the Morning” (1965), a lightweight drama about newlyweds, with Yvette Mimieux. That did not call for (or yield) a … Read more

In the early 1900s, Franz Boas, who is considered one of the founders of American anthropology, became fascinated by a large shrine associated with Indigenous whaling rituals off the coast of British Columbia. He had been sent a photograph of the shrine, which belonged to members of an Indigenous group called the Mowachaht. It showed … Read more

Johnny Mathis, a pop music singer and one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, said this week that he would perform only four more live concerts before retiring from touring after nearly 70 years. Known for his “velvet voice” on romantic ballads like “It’s Not for Me to Say” and “Wonderful! Wonderful!” … Read more

Gai Gherardi, a Los Angeles optician who with a partner attracted a celebrity clientele by pioneering the notion that eyeglass frames did not have to be dull but rather could be fashion statements of individuality, died on March 16 at her home in Hollywood. She was 78. Her sister, Heather Gherardi, said the cause was … Read more

Variety, ambition and ingenuity are on generous display at theaters throughout the United States this spring, with a healthy crop of new shows, a lauded Kinks musical making its North American debut and one friend of Paddington starring in a Chekhov play. These dozen productions are worth putting on your radar. ‘Here There Are Blueberries’ … Read more

Pablo Alboran, ‘Clickbait’ The Spanish pop songwriter Pablo Alboran usually deals in romance. But “Clickbait” confronts a different class of relationships: the parasocial ones online. “Many say they know me, but they have no idea who I am,” he complains in Spanish, with an Auto-Tuned edge. In Spanglish, he continues, “Flash flash, mucho clickbait, mucho … Read more

Dear readers, Do you know the difference between an astronaut and a cosmonaut? The distinction rests on where the -naut was trained: Cosmonauts hail from Russia and astronauts from the United States, Canada, or Europe. Not China, though: The Chinese version is a taikonaut. If there exists another job with three different names of equally … Read more

In the music video for “Ankles,” the first single from Lucy Dacus’s fourth studio album, the singer plays a pleasure-seeking Victorian-era damsel that has escaped from a painting to gallivant around Paris. Her foil is a stern museum guard trying to corral her back into her frame. Dacus came up with the idea as a … Read more