Culture Watch

Jo Freeman writes: On December 5 Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) told the Fifth annual Woman Rule Summit that she saw the same energy and enthusiasm in women during the last year that she saw [during the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings], and thought another Year might be coming. Sexual harassment by powerful men certainly attracted a lot more attention in 2017 than it did 25 years ago. There has been a shift in the presumption that the women were lying to a belief that the men are in denial. The Women Rule Summit featured issues of importance to women in more than just politics. The Fifth Summit had panels on women in sports, as entrepreneurs, in federal law enforcement, as well as a lot of politics.   more »

"Americans from across the nation should be outraged by President Trump's unlawful attempt to eviscerate the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, one of our country's wildest and most scientifically significant federal public landscapes," said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Utah's largest conservation organization. "No one will look back on this decision in 15, 25 or 50 years and say Trump did the right thing by protecting less of this magnificent place. And by promoting this illegal act, Utah's parochial congressional delegation and local politicians have firmly come down on the wrong side of history." more »

Henry James and American Painting, an exhibition that is the first to explore the relationship between James' literary works and the visual arts, is appearing at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. On view until Jan. 21, 2018, it offers a fresh perspective on the master novelist and the significance of his friendships with American artists John La Farge, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, and close friend and esteemed arts patron, Isabella Stewart Gardner. more »

While Paris was known as a cosmopolitan city, Parisian society was still very restrictive for women. They were not allowed to attend the École des Beaux-Arts, the country’s most important art academy until 1897, and it was not socially acceptable to frequent public spaces, such as cafes, to work on their art and mingle with their peers without a male companion. The exhibition traces how women embraced their artistic aspirations and helped create an alternative system that included attending private academies, exhibiting independently and forming their own organizations. more »