Brown University

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Breaking down the cost of Brown; birth control mirth; business as usual

Mayor Angel Taveras and Brown University are locked in a nasty fight over upping the school's payments to the city. And the university's governing board has announced it will hike tuition and fees by 3.5 percent next year.
Hill hiking
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | February 17, 2012

‘Taoist Gods’ and ‘Immortals’ at Brown and RISD

As China marked the beginning of the Year of the Dragon with lion and dragon dances and fireworks last week, Brown University's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology was debuting "Taoist Gods from China: Ceremonial Paintings from the Mien".
The language of aesthetics
By GREG COOK | February 03, 2012

The Providence Postcard Project: Love letters to a city

The Big Blue Bug is here.
Missives
By PHILIP EIL | February 03, 2012

Smell and the evolution of disgust

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will," Peter Süskind writes in his psychological thriller, Perfume (1985).
The Senses
By MAGGIE LANGE | January 20, 2012

Shows worth seeing in the new year

From centuries-old Taoist visions to the ways technology can channel emotions, local exhibits this winter prompt comparisons between then and now.
Eyes wide open
By GREG COOK | December 30, 2011

Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium’s Parade

Parade might be the best musical, as well as the most unlikely one, that you've never seen. Its one-line plot description isn't exactly alluring.
An unfortunate man
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 09, 2011

“Nostalgia Machines” at Brown’s Bell Gallery

Jonathan Schipper's Measuring Angst (2009) might be a complicated machine built to help you ponder whether your life would be better if you could take back the stupid thing you did last night.
Reconsidering the future
By GREG COOK | November 25, 2011

A feisty Lady Windermere’s Fan at Brown

Late 19th-century England may have imprisoned, ostracized, and fatally broke the health of Oscar Wilde, but not before he took up his pen and successfully dueled with British hypocrisy in several successful social satires.
Social insecurity
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 11, 2011

Cai Guo-Qiang, “Sustainable Beauty,” and “Independents”

Cai Guo-Qiang has mounted his two big crocodiles at head height, where you can peer into their snapped open jaws lined with fangs.
Quick impressions
By GREG COOK | October 28, 2011

With Occu-Stock, a movement seeks direction

Occupy Providence has only just begun to sink its roots into the dusty turf of Burnside Park. But already, there is talk of what comes next.
Futures
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | October 28, 2011

Conservative donors eagerly fund Brown University's Political Theory Project

Last month on a bright fall day, hundreds of Brown University students spurned sun and Frisbee for a debate on the constitutionality of President Obama's health care reform law.
Ideological tug-of-war
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | October 14, 2011

A few great places to go when you want to look great

You're new to town and you want to get all dolled up for that lecture on cognitive linguistics. What to do?
Altered images
By ELIZABETH RAU | September 30, 2011

FirstWorks’ eighth annual “Pixilerations”

Rebecca Mushtare's StoryQuilt invites you to sit at a faux sewing machine and tell it a story, which the Mount Kisco, New York, artist's software converts into a virtual quilt that is projected on the wall above.
Balancing act: tech and art
By GREG COOK | September 30, 2011

Rohde to Teach Brown Class

From Brown University: David Rohde, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, will join the Brown University faculty as an adjunct professor of English for the 2012...
By David Scharfenberg | September 20, 2011

A British invasion and the local hall of fame

The art season follows the school year.
Autumn offerings
By GREG COOK | September 16, 2011

Sex and jealousy, Rhode Island-style

Francesca Gregorini, co-director of the film Tanner Hall , which was shot in Rhode Island and opens here this week, drove a vintage Porsche while she was a student at Brown University . . . or so I had read. I asked her whether this was true.
The Big Screen
By AMY LITTLEFIELD | September 16, 2011

Brown’s “Building Expectation” showcases architectural visions

One of the curious things about the future, as Nathaniel Robert Walker observes, is that "nearly everyone can recognize the place where no one has been." It's all clean, efficient, gleaming metal and glass skyscrapers; pervasive digital technology; and
Back to the future
By GREG COOK | September 10, 2011

Crispin Glover’s “Big Slide Show” comes to town

Crispin Glover made a career out of being the weirdly jittery guy in big, loud movies like Hot Tub Time Machine and Back to the Future . But it's what he did with that career that's bringing him to Providence.
Hellion on wheels
By ROB TURBOVSKY | September 09, 2011

The artist who stayed behind

I meet Peter Glantz in front of the faded Atlantic Mills complex in Olneyville and we walk around back.
Olneyville Stories
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | August 26, 2011

Emotions run high at the Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep

Summer brings the annual trio of productions by Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep. Love is the common theme of this year's plays — love and its soulmate misery, it goes without saying.
Love and misery
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | July 29, 2011

Review: Theater of Thought's Executor

Producer, director, and actor Amber Kelly's Theater of Thought likes to take audiences by the imaginations and thrust them into the actual locations of plays they are watching.
Mediocre mystery
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | July 08, 2011

Review: ''Among the Breakage'' scratches the surface at Bell Gallery

Over the past dec-ade, Providence art has been known for its visionary printmaking and graphics, crafty constructions, and funhouse installations, but local painting has tended to operate out of the limelight.
An incomplete picture
By GREG COOK | July 01, 2011

Review: Leitzel and Billings at AS220; and ''Creative Collective''

In Marc Leitzel's sharply real scratchboard drawings in AS220's main gallery (115 Empire Street, Providence, through June 25), he depicts a tense moment between a couple in bed, a wind-blown woman wrapped in a cape, and a woman with tree branches and lea
Light and dark
By GREG COOK | June 17, 2011

The challenge: redesign the coastline

We relate to shorelines reactively — we structure ports around jagged edges, avoid dangerous cliffs and fret that climate change will result in Hawaiian islands going the way of Atlantis.
Water Dept.
By NICOLE FRIEDMAN | June 10, 2011

StoryCorps lands in Rhode Island

Listen: Muriel Mackie patrolled Pawtucket in a white helmet and whistle during World War II.
Audio Dept.
By AMY LITTLEFIELD | June 03, 2011

The Bard goes green

Hark ye, eco-warriors, bearers of the canvas tote! Today's greenies could learn a thing or two from a country-bred Englishman who lived before automobiles and oil spills — William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's Enchanted World
By AMY LITTLEFIELD | May 27, 2011

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