Maira Kalman’s “Amid It All”

Maira Kalman’s “Amid It All”

For the cover of the March 23, 2026, Spring Style & Design Issue, the artist Maira Kalman painted a vase exploding with flowers, capturing the anticipatory air the season brings. She cited Gustav Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde” (“The Song of the Earth”) as her inspiration: “ ‘Dark is life. Spring is here. The birds…

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Noma’s Food Is Art. Its Head Chef and Co-Owner Is a Problem

Noma’s Food Is Art. Its Head Chef and Co-Owner Is a Problem

People love to scoff at this sort of high-concept culinary stuff. What’s served at Noma is “food” in the way that couture is clothing–a basic human need spun so far beyond the minimums of physical exigency that it’s almost nonsensical to hold it to similar standards. Did lunch at Noma taste good? Is a shredded,…

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What Went Wrong When Susan Sontag Met Thomas Mann?

What Went Wrong When Susan Sontag Met Thomas Mann?

Gil Rodin sent his nephew to the Reinhardt Workshop, a performing-arts school run by the towering Austrian émigré director Max Reinhardt, who had settled in L.A.. Reinhardt had made a bewitching adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which featured the film début of Olivia de Havilland and Mickey Rooney’s breakthrough role as Puck, but his…

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