Arts

Zak Goldstein on his ‘Unconventional Portrait’

By Sophie Herron | May 14

When Zak Goldstein was around 4-years-old, he built a model solar system out of ping pong balls with his dad. Today, he’s wrapping up his senior thesis at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.

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Theater

Katie Spiropoulos talks theater, art, ambition

By Spring LaRose | May 13

“How do I take a risk? How do I do something new every single day?” graduating senior Katie Spiropoulos mused, posing questions that are on the mind of every artist — and ones that she herself has intimately wrestled with.

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Music

Ankitha Raman on music as an outlet at Tufts

By Evan Kelly | May 13

Graduating senior Ankitha Raman knew coming into college that she wanted to continue playing music. A child of a musical father, she was classically trained in piano throughout her childhood and was involved in music ensembles in school.

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Arts

"I Love Boosters” Review: The revolution will not be normal

By Noah Goldstein | April 28

Before Boots Riley redefined himself as a full-blown filmmaker with his 2018 film “Sorry To Bother You,” he was the established frontman of Oakland-based rap group The Coup. The group is a politically incendiary collective whose most popular records bear titles like “My Favorite Mutiny” and “5 Million Ways To Kill a C.E.O.” The son of a civil rights attorney and a Jewish refugee-turned-activist, Riley spent his teenage years organizing school walkouts and rising through the ranks of the Progressive Labor Party. 

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Arts

‘Lázár’ heralds the emergence of a new, bold voice in literature

By Claire LeCates | April 28

Nelio Biedermann’s “Lázár” opens with an epigraph taken from a poem by German writer Alfred Lichtenstein. “A blond poet perhaps goes mad” is inscribed on the page in greeting, maybe in warning. And just as Lichtenstein’s blond poet unravels, so do Lázár’s subjects.

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Arts

‘I Want Your Sex’ is a call for Gen Z to touch grass, and each other

By Noah Goldstein | April 28

Has Gregg Araki ever truly been a provocateur, or is he just a breezy, sex-positive activist stuck in an important filmmaker’s body? The anarchic energy of his early work points to the former, but his latest, despite its provocative title “I Want Your Sex,” suggests he may have evolved into something closer to the latter — if there’s a difference between them at all.

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Columns

The Bigger Picture: How ‘The Drama’ missed its bigger picture

By Linda Huang | April 24

The new A24 film “The Drama” (2026), directed by Kristoffer Borgli and starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, looks good on paper: It has a likable cast, great humor, engagement with social issues and a theme that extends beyond the generic plots romantic comedies often embody. All in all, “The Drama” seems to check many of the boxes that would typically appeal to viewers. Yet after watching it, I was left completely unfulfilled.

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Columns

An Everyday Art Tour: Living history

By Sophie Herron | April 23

Tufts alumnus Henry Cooke (A’79, AG’84), founder of Historical Costume Services, discovered his passion for history while trying to bolster his college application. Cooke worked throughout high school to pay for college, which didn’t leave him much time for extracurriculars. Because of his interest in history, his school counselor suggested he join a newly-formed minuteman reenactment group. 

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Arts

Christopher Golden explains why every word has to be yours

By Sarin Chaimattayompol | April 22

Ray Bradbury once wrote, “You fail only if you stop writing.” The best writing advice is simply to write but, as generative AI has risen, it has soured many people’s taste for putting pen to paper and turning imagination into story. Author Christopher Golden (LA’89) stands firmly against the AI trend.

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Arts

Dead, sexy and disgusting: Media’s take on the female body

By Spring LaRose | April 17

Whose body is more polarizing than that of Sydney Sweeney? The “Euphoria” actress and entrepreneur has strategically capitalized on her looks through infamous, sexualized ad campaigns with Dr. Squatch and American Eagle. She has become the bane of feminists’ existence and the apple of the conservative eye.

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Arts

‘The Drama’ lacks proper dignity in favor of uncomfortable discourse

By Makens Joseph | April 16

The most recent A24 film, “The Drama” (2026), a romantic comedy written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, features notable co-stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. After a pre-wedding dinner, a group of friends plays a game revealing the worst thing they’ve ever done, leading Emma (Zendaya) to reveal a shocking incident from her past. It’s a bombshell to everyone — especially her fiancé Charlie (Pattinson) — when Emma nervously admits she had planned a mass shooting when she was a teenager. This revelation becomes the hurdle blocking their path to marriage as both try their hardest to work through it.

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Arts

Losing parts of a whole

By Isadora Alexis | April 14

Massachusetts-based artist Diana Zipeto’s recent additions to her “Fatherland/s” series begin with an invitation.

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Arts

A Friday at the Boston Progressive Jazz Festival

By Noah Goldstein | April 10

Boston is, and has for a long time been, a city of nascent artistic talents. Taking the Berklee College of Music alone, which graduates around 1,300 students each year, one would assume that a vibrant and expansive music scene would naturally follow. But, as it turns out, this assumption proves to be at best a half-truth. For as long as Boston has been a city teeming with the talents of clear-eyed and full-hearted college bands, it has likewise been the site of continuous struggle for performance and practice spaces, with most acts being confined to DIY basement shows or backyard gatherings.

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Columns

The Bigger Picture: Nostalgia for a life never lived

By Linda Huang | April 9

I haven’t ugly cried from watching a movie in a very long time, but something about sad Chinese drama movies always makes it impossible for me to hold back my tears. And that was my activity last Tuesday night: alone in my room, crying about emotions that I couldn’t pinpoint in the moment.

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Arts

The decline in reading comprehension

By Claire LeCates | April 8

When asked what I’m studying, I normally shrug and noncommittally say “English.” I want to make it clear that I’m aware it’s a somewhat romantic pursuit, set apart from the new standard of preprofessional studies and STEM obsessions that have spread throughout the undergraduate world. It’s easy to interrogate myself and try to identify the point of studying English literature. I find myself searching for an answer that feels like it’s moving further and further away in an increasingly artificial world. 

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Columns

Evanescence and the beautiful foolishness of things: The blue-green sky after April rain

By Isabella Jin | April 7

As Boston enters April, though there are hints of warming weather, a more significant change is rain replacing the continuous snow. While we trek through the muddy paths uphill and contemplate whether to bring an umbrella to class, the sky overhead is shifting through different hues. Ancient East Asian potters noticed these nuanced changes and incorporated them into their works. So today we’ll be observing the celadon glaze widely used in East Asian ceramicware, which is reminiscent of the purity of jade and the mistiness of April rain. 

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Columns

An Everyday Art Tour: Something real

By Sophie Herron | April 2

Leatherwork is a relatively new love for Basil Cleveland, president and cofounder of the Boston Leather Guild. He discovered the material around five years ago through a different hobby –– woodworking.

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