Sam Ben-Meir

[caption id="attachment_71775" align="alignright" width="100"] Sam Ben-Meir[/caption]

Sam Ben-Meir, PhD is an adjunct professor at Mercy College. His current research focuses on environmental ethics and animal studies. sam@alonben-meir.com

Harmonious Magic: JMW Turner at the Boston Museum of Fine Art

By Sam Ben-Meir NEW YORK — Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), the English Romantic artist who lifted landscape and seascape painting to new and enthralling heights will never cease to amaze, inspire and make us question what we thought we knew about painting, about what colored pigment on canvas can do. “Turner’s Modern World” at […]

Harmonious Magic: JMW Turner at the Boston Museum of Fine Art Read More »

Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir, USA

Charles Ray at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Sam Ben-Meir Charles Ray (b. 1953) — undoubtedly one of the most conceptually and visually breathtaking sculptors alive today — is enjoying something of cultural moment at present, with four exhibitions on two continents, including “Charles Ray: Figure Ground” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Throughout his career, Ray has been engaged in

Charles Ray at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Read More »

Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir, USA

The Art of Transformation: Vasily Kandinsky at the Guggenheim

By Sam Ben-Meir NEW YORK — The Russian-born artist Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was one of the early pioneers in the field of abstract painting – along with Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and Hilma af Klint, among others. Through September 5, New York’s Guggenheim Museum is hosting “Around the Circle,” an immense retrospective of this extraordinarily

The Art of Transformation: Vasily Kandinsky at the Guggenheim Read More »

International, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir, USA

Where Will We Draw the Line in Ukraine?

By Sam Ben-Meir NEW YORK — With last week’s bombing of a maternity ward, the increased targeting of Ukrainian civilians, and the strike against a military base just miles from the Polish border, the brutality and audacity of Russian forces will only grow as Vladimir Putin becomes increasingly desperate to crush Ukraine’s government, its independence,

Where Will We Draw the Line in Ukraine? Read More »

International, Opinion, Sam Ben-Meir, USA

Philip Guston and Musa McKim at the Currier Museum

By Sam Ben-Meir NEW YORK — Currently on view at the Currier Museum, Philip Guston’s mural “Pulpwood Logging” (1941) is right beside its original partner, Musa McKim’s “Wildlife in the White Mountains” (1941). Both 14-foot murals were commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) — a federal program created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat

Philip Guston and Musa McKim at the Currier Museum Read More »

Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir

Poems in Paint: Titian at the Gardner Museum

Titian: Women, Myth & Power at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum consists of only six paintings, yet this one-room exhibition feels more like a six-course banquet. So overwhelming, immense and entrancing are the monumental canvases that upon entering the room one must literally catch one’s breath. Titian, greatest of the Venetian Renaissance masters, referred to these paintings, commissioned by King Philip II of Spain, as poesie (poems) and each depicts a different scene from stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

Poems in Paint: Titian at the Gardner Museum Read More »

Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir

Autonomy and the Moral Obligation to Get Vaccinated

To date, nearly two hundred million Americans – just over 60 percent of the population – have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Recent reports indicate that unvaccinated adults are more than three times as likely to lean Republican. In other words, for every unvaccinated Democrat there are roughly three unvaccinated Republicans. An important question then not only for bioethicists but for all of us is whether there exists a moral obligation to vaccinate. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

Autonomy and the Moral Obligation to Get Vaccinated Read More »

Lifestyles, Sam Ben-Meir, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

OpEd: U.S. Should Put Caps on Income

Is it not extraordinary that in a country that claims to be as enlightened and advanced as ours that the combined wealth of three individuals – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and investor Warren Buffett – should exceed the total wealth of the bottom half of Americans? One has to return to the days of the pharaohs of Egypt to find a parallel to the extreme wealth inequality that we see in in America today. Such stark inequality, and the ever-growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny few will only intensify if we continue as we have for the past 40 years. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

OpEd: U.S. Should Put Caps on Income Read More »

Business & Finance, Sam Ben-Meir, USA

Beyond Functionality: Modern and Contemporary Ceramics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D NEW YORK — What are the aesthetic, sensuous, and expressive possibilities inherent in clay as a material substance in all its physicality? How is it possible that ceramics can restore, or rather reconfigure and remake our relationship to the natural world? These are among the fundamental questions posed by “Shapes from

Beyond Functionality: Modern and Contemporary Ceramics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Read More »

Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir, USA

Motion, Violence are Elements of MMA’s Cézanne Exhibit

The Museum of Modern Art is currently presenting an exhibition devoted to an in-depth review of Paul Cézanne’s drawings. If there is any criticism to be made of this extraordinary show, it is that it is frankly overwhelming: with roughly 280 pencil, ink and gouache drawings and watercolors (and even a handful of oil paintings), there is so much to take in that two or three visits to the exhibition may be required to do it justice. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

Motion, Violence are Elements of MMA’s Cézanne Exhibit Read More »

Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir, USA

Short Story: ‘The Conductor’

I am always surprised and rather dismayed whenever I hear my fellows disparage the vocal production of our avian cousins. Do you not know, I want to say, that many birds – from the nightingale to the song sparrow – are consummate musicians? The Lyrebird, that clears a patch of forest floor, prepares his stage on which to sing and dance. Is this not an artist, in the most complete sense? Birdsong is indeed music, a spontaneous expression of how a particular bird experiences and feels the world. So much so that some birds have been known to sing with such intensity and passion that their little hearts have burst in the very e ecstasy of the transport – as if their poor frames could not contain the overwhelming spiritual force of the music. [Sam Ben-Meir]

Short Story: ‘The Conductor’ Read More »

Jewish Fiction, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir

Short Story: The Fly

Once upon a time there was a fly – by all outward appearances an ordinary and inconspicuous housefly. But this fly was quite unlike its fellows, unlike any fly that has ever been or is ever likely to be again. For this fly was in love, and not with another fly let me hasten to add. This fly was in love – in love, I say – with a man. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

Short Story: The Fly Read More »

Jewish Fiction, Sam Ben-Meir