Recent links of note:

“Queen of suspense—the art of Patricia Highsmith”
Matthew Sperling, Apollo

Tom Ripley, the eponymous character in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), adds new meaning to the term “con artist.” Among his many skills and side hustles, he’s an art forger with a dream—if he can get away with his spree of murder and fraud, that is—to travel the world and “to look at the art of those countries . . . . to collect paintings that he liked, and to help young painters with talent who needed money.” As it happens, Highsmith was fairly ensconced in the New York art scene herself as a young woman in the 1940s. It makes sense that she was acquainted with the equally grumpy and reclusive Peggy Guggenheim, somewhat of a kindred soul. Read on for more about Highsmith’s New York years, and be sure to stay tuned for Brooke Allen’s review of a new Highsmith biography in the February issue of The New Criterion.

“Has Turkey halted plans to turn Chora museum into a mosque?”
Ayla Jean Yackley, The Art Newspaper

The fate of priceless art hangs in the balance as the Turkish government seems to be rethinking its conversion of the Chora church and museum in Istanbul into a mosque. The planned change would involve covering up massive Christian mosaics from the late Byzantine era—just as the government did with Hagia Sophia last year. Art historians have grave concerns about the methods to be used, including, it seems, clunky electric moving blinds. After hundreds of years of Turkish rule, one might think such “censorship” was nothing new for Christian churches in Turkey. Yet according to Ayla Jean Yackley in The Art Newspaper, it doesn’t have to be so: Muslims saw fit to worship in Chora with some of the Byzantine mosaics in full view throughout the Ottoman era.

“There’s no better sonic hangover cure: New Year’s Day Concert reviewed”
Richard Bratby, The Spectator

Since 1937, The Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day Concert has been the first big event of the year in the classical world. In Russia, where I spent my Christmas, it’s carried on one of the main television channels and is a New Year’s Day tradition. We greeted it with cups of tea and caviar in hand. Catch the on-demand video here until January 31.

Podcasts:

“Music for a While #39: Sounds of Christmas.”
Jay Nordlinger, The New Criterion’s music critic, talks music—but, more important, plays music.

Dispatch:

“Shifting sands,” by Clayton Trutor. A review of A World Beneath the Sands: Adventurers and Archaeologists in the Golden Age of Egyptology, by Toby Wilkinson.

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