David Krasnow

The songs in this collection of traditional Italian folk music were all written by, for and about the Mafia, and provide a tantalizing oral history of Italy's mythic criminal universe. Produced by David Krasnow.

In 1978, in the worst urban blight New York City had ever experienced, the filmmaker Henry Hills found the arts thriving in the in the cracks in the asphalt. He filmed dancers improvising in vacant lots, poets giving lectures on the street, and composers like John Zorn giving loft concerts. ...

Billy Collins just completed his term as Poet Laureate of the United States. Collins reads from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and talks about the challenge of writing poetry about big things like democracy. Produced by David Krasnow.

You may remember a part of a dance you’ve seen, a beautiful movement or a striking arrangement of bodies. But you probably couldn’t recreate those things, and you'd have a tough time trying to convey someone else how to do the dance. As David Krasnow discovered, dancers themselves are ...

Alec Wilkinson was just a young guy when he decided that he could become a writer and maybe get rich. He found the perfect teacher. After a career editing John Updike and Vladimir Nabokov, William Maxwell took this clueless kid under his wing. Wilkinson is now ...

A couple of centuries ago, when the novel was first coming into its own in English literature, writers and publishers had no scruples about pretending their fiction was the god's-honest truth. Then as now, lots of readers felt that nonfiction was more important. Studio 360's David Krasnow went looking ...

Kurt Andersen and Michael Govan, the director of Dia:Beacon, tour this new museum housed in an old printing building in the Hudson Valley, about 75 miles north of New York City. Dia made this space so it could house sculpture and art that would never fit comfortably in ...

In 1978, in the worst urban blight New York City had ever experienced, the filmmaker Henry Hills found the arts thriving in the in the cracks in the asphalt. He filmed dancers improvising in vacant lots, poets giving lectures on the street, and composers like John Zorn giving loft concerts. ...

Baseball season has just begun. Designer and Cleveland Indians loyalist Michael Bierut is a huge fan of the game and a connoisseur of the ballpark. He looks at what separates the mid-century monstrosity from the field of dreams. Produced by David Krasnow.

New York, NY —

The Guggenheim Museum has just unveiled one of the art world's most anticipated spectacles: an exhibition of Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle. The show includes sculptures, photographs, banners, installations, and feature films. It also features the use of non-traditional unstable materials...like vaseline.

During the installation, David ...

Last month, the Guggenheim Museum unveiled one of the art world's most anticipated spectacles: an exhibition of Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle. In the films and sculptures that make up the Cremaster cycle, Barney makes bizarre use of everyday materials, including concrete, tapioca, Vaseline and rock salt. While the ...

When we think about support for the arts, certain names come to mind, like Mellon, and Guggenheim, and MacArthur. But in every concert hall and museum, the wall of benefactors is engraved with a few patrons who go by "anonymous." Who are these people? Produced by David Krasnow.

The myth of Icarus symbolizes fleeting glory, and the foolishness of flying too high, literally and figuratively. A story about Spencer Finch, a painter who tried to depict Icarus' hubris and doom. Produced by David Krasnow.

Margaret Leng Tan, a virtuoso of the grand piano, takes Schroeder‘s place at the plastic one.

(Originally aired: July 4, 2002)

You may remember a part of a dance you’ve seen, a beautiful movement or a striking arrangement of bodies. But you probably couldn’t recreate those things, and you'd have a tough time trying to convey someone else how to do the dance. As producer David Krasnow discovered, dancers themselves ...

The songs in this collection of traditional Italian folk music were all written by, for, and about the Mafia, and provide a tantalizing oral history of Italy's mythic criminal universe.

When east coast photographer Nick Muellner set out for the arid basins of southeast Utah, he brought with him a book by the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov. And when Muellner's photographs turned out stranger than he expected, he found himself trying to crack open Nabokov's perfectly constructed literary images. 

Producer David Krasnow profiles the experimental composer Pauline Oliveros, who built her career on what she calls “deep listening.”

(Originally aired: April 25, 2002)

The myth of Icarus symbolizes fleeting glory, and the foolishness of flying too high, literally and figuratively. Spencer Finch is a painter who tried to depict that myth, and capture Icarus' hubris and doom. 

Margaret Leng Tan, a virtuoso of the grand piano, takes Schroeder's place at the plastic one.