Gifford Beal’s On the Hudson at Newburgh was hidden beneath another painting for most of the 20th century. Really. Childe Hassam once told an interviewer, “I believe the thoroughfares of the great French metropolis are not one whit more interesting than the streets of New York.” And our painting is just as good, too!, he didn’t say, but he may as well have: Upon his return from study in Paris in 1889, Hassam, along with…

In the recent incarnation now playing at the Folger Theatre, the Classical Theatre of Harlem has managed to inject King Lear with a sort of Bacchanalian ferocity. This is a very physical production of the Shakespearean tragedy, and the intensity serves the work well. It also means we have moments, like when Gloucester is blinded by the treacherous Cornwall, where we actually see the villan squeeze the man’s eyeballs until they burst, squirting juices towards…