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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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A Personal Note On Pride Month

While the holy month of Pride was upon us, I thought often of the ancient Dance of Death. Through the 1990s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, a parade saluting sexual behaviors that shortened lives struck me as a celebration against itself—an inverted Danse Macabre. What once had been cautionary and didactic was  becoming […]

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Pope Francis, The FCC, And Gender Ideololgy

Pope Francis’ coy two-step on sexual mores hangs over Catholic culture like the sword of Damocles. Papal ambiguity weakens the Catholic Radio Association’s current effort to resist newly mandated reporting rules about workforce diversity. Driving the rules is an ideological ambition to demolish the scaffolding of traditional behavioral norms regarding sex. Specifically at issue is […]

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Seeing Things: Female Impersonation from Cabaret to Identity

So far as seeing things is an art, it is the art of keeping your eyes and ears open. (John Borroughs, 1908) You really can tell some things just by looking. It cannot be said too often: the eye is an organ of the brain. It has its own way of knowing. When it looks, […]

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Studio Matters: Art Talk, Church Talk, et al.

Studio Matters began as a companion to my columns for the culture desk of The New York Sun in its brief reincarnation as a print edition. I often miss my weblog’s original mandate. At the time, The Sun ran the best arts coverage in New York City. A small troupe of us covered visual arts […]

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Harrison Butker At The Podium

Harrison Butker’s commencement address at Benedictine College was a mixed pleasure. There was much in it to cheer. Nonetheless, his spotlight on Josemariá Escrivá de Balaguer, (1902-1975), founder of Opus Dei, raised a red flag. How familiar is Butker with the richness of Catholic tradition beyond the contours of a quasi-sectarian, ultra-orthodox movement hinged on […]

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Francis, the Venice Biennale, and the Vacuum of Belief

Francis is the first pope to tour the Venice Biennale. May he be the last. A good deal of sugar has been spun from the unexamined conceit that art—Art—is a moral pill to treat social problems. A trademark of upper-middle and upper-upper class groupthink, it was in high relief on Sunday, April 28. That day […]

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