Not a utensil for making art, but art itself, and labeled as such by two of the city's preeminent cultural institutions. With shows at the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, we are apparently to accept this Sergoviaover-Springsteen thing, this Djangoover-Yngwie dynamic, to allow Woody Guthrie's fascist-killing machine as still life with frou-frou basket. The truth is, I'd rather take a guitar out to a dive bar to satiate my guitar fetish rather than spend the afternoon ogling it in hallowed halls. But with all those curvy instruments beckoning, to the museums I went. more

New York City provided inspiration to some of the great composers of the last century. John Cage marveled at the sounds of Sixth Avenue, and the publication of Ned Rorem’s New York Diary may h more

THIS CRAMPED CHELSEA office could be mistaken for a telemarketing operation, except for the small bookshelf lined with titles like Delirious New York and Women Artists of Italian Futurism. more