Artful Musings

Arts & Letters Live's Artful Musings programs explore relationships between various art forms, including literature, visual arts, music, film, dance, and popular culture. They also combine art forms in creative ways. Some of the programs featured in this series include a five-year collaboration with musicians from the Southeastern Festival of Song (thematically organized programs combining music, works of art from the Museum's collection, and literature); New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz exploring his process of creating word puzzles and then engaging the audience in solving puzzles with literary and visual art clues; cartoonists from the New Yorker discussing their creative process; authors Arthur Golden and Liza Dalby discussing the translation of the bestselling novel Memoirs of a Geisha from book to film; and New York choreographer Jessica Lang, in collaboration with Booker T. Washington Repertory Dance Company, creating a suite of dances inspired by the exhibition Matisse: Painter as Sculptor. Other participants in Arts & Letters Live's Artful Musings series include authors Jared Diamond (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed; Guns, Germs, and Steel), Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels), Tracy Chevalier (Girl with the Pearl Earring), Bruce Feiler (Walking the Bible), and graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis). For a complete list of programs in our Artful Musings series, visit the Archives section of the website.