Culture
The Understudy’s Century
The National’s revival of “The Glass Diplomat” has been celebrated as a triumph of staging. Its real subject is the performer the audience almost never sees.
Section
Culture
Arts, books, music and the ideas that move us.
Culture
Culture
The Museum That Refuses to Choose
A new national gallery has hung its collection with no chronology, no nations and no wall text. Curators call it radical. Visitors, so far, call it a relief.
Culture
The Orchestra That Rehearses in the Dark
A conductor’s experiment in playing without sheet music has produced the most talked-about season in the philharmonic’s history — and a quiet argument about what memory does to music.
Culture
The Library That Lends Time Instead of Books
A small experiment in a neighbourhood branch has quietly become the most borrowed service in the city’s library system. It contains no books at all.