a selection of recently published articles

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New York Times: Back at the Barre, Lessons Learned

LONDON — When students at the Royal Ballet School scattered to their homes around the globe during the first British lockdown last spring, classes went virtual and, at first, proved quite tricky.It was not just about time differences, with…
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New York Times: In Zimbabwe, Women Dig for Aquamarine

As Iver Rosenkrantz and Patrick Tendayi Zindoga drove through the fertile countryside of northern Zimbabwe one day in late 2018, they noticed something out of the ordinary: A woman who had just started plowing a field with a few oxen under…
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New York Times: An Early Fascination With Caves Leads to a World Stage

Kabage Karanja had one of his earliest and most profound experiences when, as a teenage member of Hodari Boys, a youth mentoring club, he camped in the Suswa Caves, northwest of Nairobi, Kenya.It was a special memory for Mr. Karanja, now an…
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New York Times: Sarah Ball’s Simple Portraits Hint at Complex Stories

LONDON — Even if Britain had lifted its Covid-19 international travel ban in time, Sarah Ball would still not have been able to accompany her work to Frieze New York this week.That’s because in February the British painter — who is also…
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FT Weekend: Surrogacy, America and Me

LONDON: Two decades ago, I got a tattoo of an Akua’ba statuette on my inner right ankle. A female fertility symbol in Ghana, the disc-headed figure comes from the Akan legend of Akua, a woman who went to a priest for advice because she was…
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New York Times: How a New Year’s Concert Was Composed

While there won’t be an in-house audience for the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert this time around, classical music lovers across the globe will still be able to experience it — and applaud the musicians — together.Viewers…
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Foreign Policy: Girls Have Greater Access to Education Than Ever, But Equality Still Long Way Off

LONDON—When Adelaide Tsogo Masenya was six, she switched primary schools. Her local school, Dr Knak Primary School, in the poor Johannesburg township of Alexandra, only taught in her native language of Sepedi. Her new school, Marlboro Gardens…
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CNN: How Ethiopian art secured its spot on the world’s stage

Over the last five years contemporary Ethiopian artists have been making a name for themselves on the global art market, but it's been a long time coming. After almost four decades of political turmoil, famine and wars, the East African country…
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New York Times: Extending a Lifeline to Museums

LONDON — The global pandemic has struck hard at countless institutions, among them most of the world’s museums. Forced to close their doors to visitors, a major source of revenue, and to cancel or postpone exhibitions, they have struggled…
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