| MATTHEW LYNCH,
EXECUTIVE EDITOR |
|
|
Honoring the face-painted rock group Kiss; attending an evening viewing of Les Mis while protestors in LA are at actual barricades; spurring changes to text about his impeachments in an exhibit about the history of the procedure—the punch lines about Donald Trump's heavy hand in stewarding Washington, DC's cultural institutions of late have written themselves. It's been easy at times in such an environment to lose track of the actually quite high stakes of the second Trump administration's interventions at outfits such as The Kennedy Center and its parent organ, The Smithsonian Institution, a vast network of museums and venues administered by the US government. Today, Manuel Roig-Franzia, a veteran of The Washington Post making his Vanity Fair debut, reports on as nerve-wracking a period as has ever existed at The Smithsonian. "The anxiety level is bumping up against 10 on a scale of 1 to 10," says one source.
Elsewhere, Kase Wickman has your guide to this season's need-to-know NFL WAGs as the fourth-week slate of games is just about done and dusted; Dan Adler checks out the scene as podcast host and political interloper Theo Von records a new stand-up special; and Olivia Empson reports on the next moves for Turning Points USA in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death. |
In late March, Donald Trump's White House had just issued an executive order, a document titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," which lambasted The Smithsonian, saying it had "in recent years come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive."
The president's unprecedented measures to take control of The Smithsonian Institution have rattled staffers, enraged artists, and even put the future of its vast collection in doubt. Manuel Roig-Franzia reports on what happened when the culture war made its way to the highest government-backed plane of American culture. |
|
|
Trophy wives? Try again. Meet the stars who love the players and the game. |
Madison Prewett Troutt finished a dramatic season of The Bachelor with 1.9 million Instagram followers—and a full-blown identity crisis: "I think we need Jesus." |
The comedian and podcaster has helped shape the new media mainstream. At a stand-up show on Saturday night, he occasionally seemed to be wrestling with the stakes of his role. |
|
|
Libby Holman, the consummate torch singer, self-styled "smart old witch," and femme fatale, never understood why almost every man she touched died violently. Actor Clifton Webb called her "the black angel of death," and director Nicholas Ray said she possessed the opposite of the Midas touch: "What would you call it? The cobra's sting?" Jon Bradshaw unravels the mysteries behind what Gore Vidal called "that dark woman, and darker legend, Libby Holman, who was like no one else we survivors ever knew." |
|
|
This e-mail was sent to you by VANITY FAIR. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, vanityfair@newsletter.vf.com, to your address book.
View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe
Copyright © Condé Nast 2025. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment