Photo by Derek Koyoumjian |
We are a culture-rich city — a veritable cauldron of talent and fun, and have been so since Anne Bradstreet inscribed the gates of Harvard. In Boston, the arts never stand still. True, if some rag-tag weekly had conducted a Best Readers’ Poll a century ago, the MFA might have won for Best Museum, as it did in the Phoenix’s 2009 contest. And its rivals would certainly have included the then-six-year-old Gardner (which, though it wasn’t a museum then, placed second this year). But don’t get the wrong idea. While Bostonians sometimes worship the past, we don’t live in it.
Many things we now accept as institutions would not have been 1909 contenders at all — the Boston Ballet, for example, and certainly Babes in Boinkland, the burlesque troupe that beat out the local corps de for this year’s Best Dance Performers honor, was a long time coming. (Although there’s a good chance the house chorines from the Old Howard would at least have been included on the Progressive Era ballot.) We know they had pool halls, but did bars host karaoke or trivia nights 100 years ago?
High-, low-, and middle-brow, Boston has it all — from Titian retrospectives to midnight Sound of Music sing-alongs. Now, as then, there’s simply no excuse for staying home.
Related:
Boston's Best City Life 2009, Boston's Best Food and Drink 2009, Slideshow: Kings of Leon at Agganis Arena, More 
- Boston's Best City Life 2009
There’s so much to love about Boston, it’s hard sometimes to know where to start. Traffic? Obnoxious Sox fans? Irritating students? Norway rats? Inflated rents? An inferiority complex unlike any on the Eastern seaboard?
- Boston's Best Food and Drink 2009
The danger of doing an annual Best issue is that readers could well screw up the whole thing, especially when it comes to eating out. It would suck if they voted for the too-familiar national-chain eateries. Best Hamburger: McDonalds?!
- Slideshow: Kings of Leon at Agganis Arena
Kings of Leon, live at Agganis Arena
- Boston exposures
Photographer Nicholas Nixon of Brookline first burst onto the scene in the show "New Topographics."
- Slideshow: Bruce Springsteen at the Garden
The Boss back in town
- Slideshow: World-Inferno Friendship Society at Paradise
World/Inferno Friendship Society at the Paradise Rock Club
- The Barking Crab
The Barking Crab's second location in Newport is the ideal spot for strolling summer tourists, right in the downtown harborfront
- Books tour
While most area colleges continue to offer predictably boring campus tours that amount to wandering through academic ghost towns imagining departed crowds, there are also some alternatives to the standard walk-and-talk routine.
- A real blast
The guttural rallying cry of an audience member on the other side of the mezzanine makes everyone laugh a bit, mostly because it peals out during one of Mogwai's gently arpeggiated intros.
- Boston Theater Marathon XI
BOSTON THEATER MARATHON XI, SCHEDULE OF PLAYS, SUNDAY MAY 17
- Art appreciation
The recent Phoenix editorial on state-government funding for arts and culture highlighted many of the challenges we face as we try to meet our aspirations as a community amidst a very difficult economic environment.
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Topics:
Dance
, Boston, Boston, Harvard University, More
, Boston, Boston, Harvard University, Boston Ballet, Anne Bradstreet, best, best, Readers' Picks, Readers' Picks, Editors' Picks, Less
