A rare ancient Greek tomb uncovered.

Oklahoma is now the State of Creativity.
It’s a new statewide initiative to “”empower all Oklahomans to develop their capacities for creativity and innovation” and “make possible the further development of world-class cultural and educational opportunities.” Ed Kelley, editor of The Oklahoman, “can think of no idea, no single project, more important to our state” than [...]

In the April issue of Atlantic Monthly (not yet available online), Ross Douthat has a smart, provocative (and at times disturbing) essay about Hollywood’s recent response to 9/11 and the Iraq War. Many conservatives, such as Peggy Noonan, hoped for a new, steely seriousness, a return to manly Cold War values. It didn’t turn out [...]

Novelist Michael Chabon writes affectionately in the New Yorker on the fantasy nature (ie., utterly unreal quality) of the superhero costume. Anyone who has been to a sci-fi or comic book convention in recent years can testify to the sagging-tights nature of “cos play” — fans obsessively dolled-up as their idols with capes and boots and home-made utility belts.
But even [...]

Fact check, says Bob Thompson in the Washington Post. It’s not really all that hard. Especially when the possible hoax doesn’t involve a few lines here or there, but the entire basis for the book. A couple of phone calls could be all it takes. 
But Colin McEnroe of the Hartford Courant doesn’t think the latest scandal — about [...]

And where does Dallas fit in?
Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic of the LA Times:
The idea that major cities of the world, rather than the nations they belong to, will be the rising powers of the 21st century is a fashionable one these days. … Distinct from the so-called mega-cities–those sprawling and often poverty-ridden metropolitan centers with [...]

Land Title Block, watercolor by Bror Utter
________________________________
You’ve probably seen it a hundred times, but familiar landmarks take on a different resonance — at different times, through different artist’s viewpoints. They gain detail and depth.
This Saturday, historian and author Quentin McGown is presenting a free lecture, “Architectural History Preserved Through the Artist’s Eye: A Study of Bror [...]

This really is brilliant. Remove Garfield from the Garfield comic, and you get a strip of almost Samuel Beckett-like minimalism. The pared-away humor, the pointless action, the blank meaninglessness: It’s the Endgame of newspaper comic strips. Thanks to Sarah Weinman for the post.
Monday, March 3rd, is Read Across America Day, sponsored by the National [...]

______________________________________________________
Richard Price Q&A on the National Book Critics Circle blog, Critical Mass
Profile of Richard Price in The New York Times Arts & Leisure section
______________________________________________________
Lush Life is Richard Price’s best novel since Clockers.
Perhaps it’s been writing for HBO’s The Wire (and not the movies), perhaps it’s because Lush Life is set in New York’s Lower East [...]

Crux Vaticana, Reliquary Cross of Justin II
In the latest issue of The New York Review of Books, Princeton history professor Peter Brown eagerly extolls the Kimbell Museum’s current exhibition, Painting the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, calling it a tour de force for former Kimbell director Timothy Potts (subscription required to read the entire [...]