Five Directions News Today

LACMA might be a de facto museum of contemporary art, but frankly it’s not a very good one.

Watch a Mary Poppins matinee at a classic venue. Celebrate A Very Jewish Christmas. Experience Jean Cocteau’s version of Beauty and the Beast. Get a sneak peek of Rose Parade floats.

Huayan Temple in Datong, built during the Liao Dynasty (916-1125), houses ancient art treasures of statues and murals.The highest structure in Huayan Temple is the 43-meter Huayan Pagoda, which is a contemporary structure in ancient style.

KWR: When I started writing  Vindicated, I wrote about the moment of Mary Shelley’s birth and the strange circumstances of her birth: the fact that her mother was this famous—and somewhat infamous—woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died of septicemia (blood poisoning) and of a retained placenta 11 days after Mary was born. Oddly, the physicians who were attending the birth brought in puppies to nurse Mary Wollstonecraft instead of bringing her child in, and that was the strangest thing. I ...

The world created by Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice has established a place for itself in contemporary culture that few other novels can match, yet amid the countless spinoffs, some stand out. Molly Greeley seems to have a special gift for creating novels that, although based on Austen’s creations, take on a life of their own. In 2019’s The Clergyman’s Wife, Greeley imagined how the marriage between Charlotte Lucas, the friend of Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet, and Mr. Collins,...