American bald eagle

In Wakanda, the techno-brilliant African nation of the Marvel film “Black Panther,” black warrior women don’t wear wigs. Compelled to conceal her shaved head to carry off an undercover mission, General Okoye, played by Danai Gurira, calls her flowing wig “a disgrace” and discards it the instant she draws her spear to battle the bad guys. The general and her royal guard of female combatants, the Dora Milaje warriors, are among a cast of characters graced with gorgeous natural hairstyles that imbue this film with the visual power of holistic black beauty. The movie weds a Black Nationalist aesthetic to an ethos of global kinship. It projects a resilience that captures the mood of our present moment. Despite and perhaps because of a surge in white supremacist language in the United States, a wave of black cultural resistance is flooding the arts as well as the streets. And with it, black hair in its natural state of sublime uprightness has returned as a symbol of political … [Read more...] about Black Hair’s Blockbuster Moment

There might be a few agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who could sit down at a piano and run through a Chopin Fantasie to calm their nerves, as Robert K. Wittman used to do. But there probably aren’t many who could also chat knowledgably about Cézanne’s influence on Soutine. Or who have studied formalism at the Barnes Foundation art museum outside of Philadelphia. Or who have found themselves in Hollywood, Fla., eating lunch with — and probably being targeted by — two large French assassins nicknamed Vanilla and Chocolate, while tantalizingly close to recovering paintings from the biggest art heist in American history, the 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. For 15 years, until his retirement in 2008, Mr. Wittman — the author of a rollicking memoir, “Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures,” released last week by Crown Publishers — was the driving force behind the F.B.I.’s efforts to pursue art thieves, a … [Read more...] about His Heart Is in the Art of Sleuthing

Kyle Long and Skylar Simpson matched on Tinder in March 2019, during a period when both were reaching their limits on dating apps and hoping to find someone serious. They started chatting, and within 48 hours they met at food hall in Denver and spent hours getting to know each other. They were among the last people left at closing time. “I just think, based on our first date, there were so many things that I just loved about Skylar,” Mr. Long, 31, said in a phone interview. Mr. Simpson, 26, a nurse, said that their shared values and similar backgrounds were what really drew him to Mr. Long, who works as a fitness instructor and life coach. “We’re both from really small rural towns, and we have a shared similar experience of growing up as gay kids in a small town,” he said. “Additionally, we’re both devoted to our families. And I think it’s been a really beautiful experience to begin to build our own family.” The pair, who live together in Denver with a cat, Monty, and … [Read more...] about The Moment They Knew: A ‘Last First Date,’ and Not a Moment Too Soon