Culture & Politics: What To See And Do This Week In Manhattan.

   
   

It’s a big week in culture and politics, so, here we go!

PBS’s FRONTLINE has won well over one-hundred awards in its twenty-three years of broadcasting important and well-researched stories that are, across time, relevant and illuminating. Frontline’s fall season begins tonight with “Cheney’s Law”.

“For three decades, Vice President Dick Cheney has waged a secretive, and often bitter battle, to expand the power of the presidency. Now, in a direct confrontation with Congress as the administration asserts executive privilege to head off investigations into domestic wiretapping and the firing of U.S. attorneys, FRONTLINE meticulously traces the behind-closed-doors battle within the administration over the power of the presidency and the rule of law.”

Click here for the PBS | Frontline local broadcasting schedule. After the broadcast, Cheney’s Law, and all the Frontline programs can be viewed online for free.

It’s National Design Week over at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Admission is free all week. The People’s Design Award, a part of the National Design Awards program, will be awarded on Thursday, and you can cast your vote until midnight tonight! Head over to the site now, because there are lots of events this week that you do not want to miss, including a webcast tonight. The top nominees currently include (of course) Apple’s iPhone, Good Magazine, and the Design Observer blog. Last year’s winner was the Katrina House. My vote last year? Moleskine. My vote this year? Tough choice, but I’m going with Design Observer, in part because last year I heard Jessica Helfand (one of Design Observer’s founders) speak at the Art Directors’ Club forum on ‘Designism’. Good Magazine is a close second.

A few months ago, while watching PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal interview with Nick Gillespie, I decided to subscribe to Gillespie’s Reason Magazine, which covers “politics, economics, culture, and science from a broad-minded libertarian perspective”. This week, Reason partners with Drew Carey, to launch Reason.tv, “home of The Drew Carey Project and other great libertarian videos.” There is already a fair amount of content. Be sure to read Brian Doherty’s piece this week, “Rand and the Right | Reflections on the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged.

I don’t know if I was asleep when the big announcement was made, but Time-Warner cable, at least here in the New York area, has played roulette with some of their channels. Even though I complained here last week about how repetitive the major cable network news shows are, I still watch them. So, imagine my surprise in turning on MSNBC this morning, expecting to see Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, only to realize that I was (gasp!) watching the new Fox Business Network on channel 43. Yikes! Here is the new channel listings from Time-Warner Cable.

”A Changing of the Guard at MoMA“, an article in today’s New York Sun profiles Kathy Halbreich, the new associate director of the Museum of Modern Art. Kate Taylor writes:

”The large number of recent, relatively young hires at MoMA, including four new chief curators in the last two years, and the looming retirement of three major curators — chief curator for paintings and sculpture John Elderfield, chief curator-at-large Kynaston McShine, and deputy director (and director of P.S. 1) Alanna Heiss — suggest that the museum is in the midst of a significant directional and generational shift.“

Well, evidently, museums, architecture, and museum’s architecture are big this week. Back at The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA’s Architecture: 1938–2004, is a gallery talk,  part of MoMA’s Brown Bag Lunch series, on, Wednesday at 1:30. Closing the end of next week is ”Lost Vanguard: Soviet Modernist Architecture, 1922–32 | Photographs by Richard Pare.“ It’s also Member’s Shopping Days, so join (if you haven’t already) and shop for 20% off. The $215 million dollar extension to Spain’s Prado Museum opens later this month, but their new, expanded and improved multi-lingual website launched this week. And lastly, via Gothamist, there seems to be a Ralph Lauren/Martha Stewart/Benjamin Moore/Dutch Boy debate over what color to paint the Guggenheim, once the renovation is complete. ”Powell Buff“ vs. ”London Fog.“ Maybe they should set up an online vote…

Enjoy the week. Weather will be in the 70s. Global Warming or Indian Summer?

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Elsewhere, more about
Culture & Politics.

Watch videos on YouTube about Dick Cheney.

See a map of The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
See a map of The Museum of Modern Art.
See a map of The Guggenheim.

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