MODERNISM'S MASTERMIND The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has opened the doors to its exhibition "Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries". (Over the course of this year and the next, the gallery will broadcast tours of its Alfred Stieglitz collection on its Web site.) According to Hilton Kramer, the show "not only illuminates a crucial chapter in the history of American modernism on a scale never before attempted, but it also serves as a model of what our museums can still achieve when they remain faithful to the highest traditions of aesthetic connoisseurship and historical scholarship in their most ambitious endeavors." Though impressed by the endeavors of the curators, Michael Kimmelman is skeptical about the overall affect. "It's a serious, straightforward show, which adds much new detail and a phone-book-thick catalog to an important and familiar chapter of history without exactly breaking ground." Meanwhile, Henry Allen seems a bit puzzled at how best to describe his experience on the Mall. He pronounces it "…an elusive and seductive show, full of instruction and beauty. Strange: It's huge and subtle at the same time, both jarring and nostalgic—glorious little fish pulsing along an invisible but powerful reef made of Stieglitz's dreams of a new American art, and of artists who would make a new, true America rise from the mausoleum of 19^th century conventions."

WRITING ON THE LINE
Writing about last year's exhibition of Chinese calligraphy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Holland Cotter wrote: "By image-obsessed Western standards, one picture is worth, absolute minimum, a thousand paltry words. But in China, where words are images, writing has traditionally been the highest art form of all, and a source of profound political and emotional power." The latest news from China suggests that the nation's handwriting tradition is under considerable strain thanks to the computer, as Jennifer Lee reports. " 'There are some characters that I can't write with a pen, but if you give me a computer I can type it out,' said Mr. Li You, a 23-year-old computer teacher who lives in rural Yangshuo in Guangxi province, in southern China. It has been more than six years since Mr. Li started using a computer for Chinese word processing. It has been just under six years since the characters started slipping away. He estimates that more than 95 percent of his writing is now done by computer. 'I can go for a month without picking up a pen,' Mr. Li said."

TIME TO UNCORK THE BOTTLE AND LET THE WINE FLOW
Laws governing the shipment of alcohol from one state to another have always seemed overly restrictive. With the advent of the Internet, and of clicking and shopping, they now seem absurdly antiquated. For example, it's illegal for Francis Ford Coppola's Californian vineyard to ship a case of red wine to a customer in Manhattan. Only licensed wholesalers are allowed to transport alcohol. Such laws penalize producers and consumers but benefit wholesale companies and tax authorities, who, as Wine Spectator reported last October, welcomed "legislation sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that puts federal enforcement power behind states' bans on interstate shipments of alcoholic beverages to consumers." There are, however, some encouraging signs of change. As WS explains: "As the 2001 legislative sessions get under way across the United States, five states so far have drafted new bills addressing the issue of whether their residents should be allowed to have wines shipped directly to their homes from out-of-state sellers. The Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts and Mississippi houses of representatives are considering legislation that would permit interstate direct-shipments of wine." Meantime in the good state of Montana, "a bill pending in the [state] Senate would make home deliveries a felony for shippers—punishable by fines and up to five years in prison." For Wine Spectator's overview of the laws governing the transportation of wine, click here. For a Slate piece on buying wine on the Internet, click here. To visit the Americans for Responsible Alcohol Access Web site click here; for the American Vintners Association click here; for the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association click here, and for the Wine Institute, click here.

HEADING FOR CUBA
Colin Powell has suggested that many American embargoes of foreign countries should be abandoned, though whether the new secretary of state will end the most significant embargo of them—the 38-year-old embargo of Castro's Cuba—is not certain. (If the Hoover Digest  article co-authored by one of Condoleezza Rice's former colleagues is any indication of the new national security adviser's thinking on the matter, then one might be led to believe that the restrictions will, indeed, be lifted.) Not that the embargo has worked well recently: Hordes of Americans travel to Havana each month. Last November Robin Cembalest, executive editor of ARTNews, was one of 3,000 Americans who visited the Havana Bienal, the most important Cuban art show. "There was the sense that the Bienal, which featured mostly installations by artists from more than 90 countries, wasn't what the Americans had come to see (and they certainly didn't come for the only one-person show devoted to an American, 'Jean-Michel Basquiat: Fiction or Reality'). ... The real action was not in the exhibition spaces, but rather in the studios, as air-conditioned buses and vans fanned out to ateliers across the city. ... In Havana, an American can pay for a $5,000 drawing with the wad of bills in his sock, roll it up, and carry it home. It's perfectly legal—art is exempt from the U.S. embargo."

DRESSED FOR CUBA
Thirty years ago—and thanks to Fidel Castro and Che Guevara—it was fashionable to wear combat jackets and camouflage trousers. Now, in 2001, military chic has returned. Just the thing if you're thinking of traveling to Cuba. As Anne Kingston observes in a column for Canada's National Post: "Once upon a time only little boys played soldier, but now [girls] can, too, what with the proliferation of military-inspired chic out there. Golly, it gives 'dressed to kill' a brand new meaning. Louis Vuitton and Celine are presenting tailored khaki drill jackets. Hermès has plastered gold epaulettes on shirts. Dior is doing flak jackets. Tom Ford has paired a cunning $1,000 black bra with a khaki jacket and shirt with oversized cargo pockets. What's more brilliant than camouflage gear, ladies? It goes with ... gee, it goes with everything."

REAGAN'S WRITING
It seems that the editors of Reagan In His Own Hand believe that readers of this new book, like its author, suffer from Alzheimer's. In their introduction, the editors say: "When Reagan wrote, he didn't scribble or scrawl, he wrote in a clear script. When he reached the bottom of the legal pad, he carefully flipped the page over, tucked it in on the back side of the pad, and proceeded onto the second page." "Wow," says Andrew Ferguson in an amusing appraisal of the book. "No wonder America loved him. The introduction continues over the next eight paragraphs with comments from other Reagan employees: 'He was constantly writing. … But all the time he was writing. … He'd turn on his reading lamp and would constantly be writing. … Reagan would sit in the backseat with his legal pad, writing. … All the way up, Reagan would be writing. … He would be writing in the backseat when we drove back. … He was always just writing. … When I woke up, he'd still be working, just writing away. …You know, everyone's got things to do. And his thing was writing. …' All right, already! He wrote, he wrote!"

ANIMAL RIGHTS
In Feed, Jonathan Fasman writes about the use and effect of antibiotics on chickens. "Not surprisingly, such widespread use of antibiotics in livestock has promoted drug-resistant strains of once easily treatable bacteria found in meat and poultry. The Centers for Disease Control reported that resistant strains of bacteria that cause food poisoning have increased for the third consecutive year." It's this sort of industrial farming that has many people turning to the work of Peter Singer, the philosopher and animal-rights advocate. But turn carefully, Alasdair Palmer counsels. "Singer's 'new ethics' is simply an old, crude, and often-refuted form of utilitarianism. One of the biggest problems with utilitarianism is that it does not reflect the values we actually have. In rejecting everything except the alleviation of suffering as 'ethically irrelevant,' utilitarianism rejects most of the thingsâ€"such as family attachments, personal projects and goals, and aesthetic responsesâ€"which make life worth living. Singer thinks this just shows that we care about a lot of things that we shouldn't." To read Ian Hacking's review of Singer's Ethics Into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement, click here. For Charles Moore's defense of fox hunting, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Charlie," click here. If you want to know why New York City's chief rat catcher enjoys his job, click here.

A GRAD UNION?
Should graduate students form a union to protect their interests? According to Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell and Tom Juravich, of the University of Massachusetts, yes they should and no, such an endeavor will not have an adverse affect on the academy. Norah Vincent writes about the proposal in the Village Voice, " 'American higher education is in the process of a fundamental transformation,' [Bronfenbrenner and Juravich] wrote. 'Universities are becoming, to varying degrees, commercial institutions.' So, unions won't turn ivory towers into factories because they're factories already. That, in fact, is why they're ripe for unionization. Lamentably, this may be true. Universities have become businesses, and unions are probably more the symptom of this state of affairs than the cause."

SHAKEN TO A FRAGILE CORE
Half and Susanne Zantop were murdered on Saturday afternoon at their home near Hanover, New Hampshire. As the New York Post reports, the crime was discovered "when a dinner guest arrived to find the couple's front door ajar and their crumpled bodies in the first-floor study." The killer is unknown. Unlike all of Saturday's other murders, or unlike murders committed by a lone gunman who goes on a shooting spree at, say, a post office or a tech lab, the deaths of the Zantops have become national and even international news not just because the couple were respected and well-liked teachers at Dartmouth College but because it's assumed that universities, unlike post offices or tech labs, are insulated from everyday life and death. As with all such campus murder cases, the prevailing view at the outset is that the killing is associated with the place itself. The "solution" to the murdersâ€"both the identity of the murderer and his, her, or their motiveâ€"will therefore say something bad about Dartmouth itself. What's surprising about such cases is the extent to which people are prepared to believe the worst. Even a panicked James Wright, president of Dartmouth, feels compelled to abrogate his responsibility to inspire some sense of calm. He tells the New York Times: "An event such as this shatters for many that sense of confidence, of optimism, and of security." For reports in the campus newspaper, The Dartmouth, click here.

TAINTED HISTORY
Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune investigates how a painting once owned by a Jewish family in Holland ended up hanging on a wall in the Art Institute of Chicago. Much of the evidence Grossman draws upon comes from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the U.S. The painting in question is Edgar Degas' "Landscape with Smokestacks," which Grossman writes, "was sold by [the painter's] estate, passing into the hands of a German, then a French collector, before being bought by [Fritz] Gutmann in 1932. After the war, it was bought by a New York collector, who sold it to Daniel Searle, a pharmaceutical magnate and trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1987 for $850,000. In 1996, the Gutmanns' heirs sued Searle, claiming the Degas had been looted during the war and that he was the possessor of stolen goods that should be returned to them. The bitter and highly publicized courtroom struggle that followed turned "Landscape with Smokestacks" into a symbol of America's share of an issue left over from World War II."