A Check and a Balance? JOHN LIU with Theodore Hamm

Local

"I will be far more aggressive in every aspect" of the Comptroller's office than Bill Thompson, says Liu. "For one, because of my financial sector training, I’ll be able to hit the ground running. And number two, I’m just a very excitable person."

The Alchemy of Identities

Express

Tell us what’s more important to you, being an Indian, or being a Muslim? If you had to decide between one or the other, which one would you choose?

SHIRIN NESHAT with Carol Becker & Phong Bui

Art

Shirin Neshat’s new full-length feature Women without Men will be shown at the 66th Venice Film Festival (September 2–12, 2009) and the Toronto International Film Festival (September 10–19, 2009). One evening in July, Carol Becker, Dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and Publisher Phong Bui, paid a visit to the SoHo loft which she shares with her partner, the artist Shoja Azari, to watch the near-final version of the film before its last minute revisions.

WILL RYMAN with Phong Bui

Art

On the occasion of the sculptor’s forthcoming exhibit, New Beginning at Marlborough Gallery, in Chelsea, which will be on view from September 10 to October 10, 2009, Will Ryman took a break from his studio to visit Art International Radio to talk to Publisher Phong Bui about his life and current body of work.

AGNES GUND with Phong Bui

Art

Despite her hectic schedule, the indefatigable Agnes Gund, in a rare one hour intermission, welcomed Publisher Phong Bui to her Upper East Side home to talk about her life, work, and recent curatorial effort Is White a Color? at the Fountain Gallery, which will be on view from September 25 to November 11, 2009.

Memories of a Not-So Distant Past

“Today the real problem is the future.” —Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, sometime between 1955 and 1976.

Roy Nathanson: THE GUY TO LOOK AT ON THE SUBWAY

Music

On a Sunday night in July, saxophonist Roy Nathanson was speaking from what might be called the stage—actually more like the corner—of the basement room at the Sycamore Club, a small, friendly bar near his home in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.

REMEMBERING MERCE

Dance

Once, after watching the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) perform, I stumbled badly out on the street, clumsy in the light after leaving the darkened interior of the theater.

It’s People. District 9 is People!

Film

It’s a South African Alien Nation, using aliens as a vehicle to transfer cultural anxieties about the Other onto the ultimate bugbear.

Mad Love from Cruels, 13, short stories

Fiction

Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith.