As the Globe Shrinks
Arts coverage is thin at Boston's paper of record - and a sampling of the latest cultural coverage
Each week, Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx contributes a commentary and selects some of the magazine’s most provocative, vivid, or timely pieces to highlight. Content is added daily — go here to see what is new.
From The Editor’s Desk
Don’t let anyone tell you that arts coverage has become so anemic in our mainstream newspapers and magazines because it is too expensive to pay for. Features, reviews, and profiles about cultural doings from freelancers cost far less that what it takes to expense investigative journalism and beat reporting. I was a freelance arts writer for decades; I am now paying arts writers for this magazine. After 19 years, I can testify that reimbursing first-rate pieces on the arts will not break the bank. The truth is, The Boston Globe and other major newspapers and magazines could easily pay for more comprehensive cultural coverage. They choose not to do so, a decision that should raise alarms about how little our major media and society values arts and culture. It also goes a long way to explaining what many lament as the decline in the economic and civic infrastructure that supports sustained, in-person, professionally produced art. The signs of decay are all around us: the end of local criticism, the fragility of small venues and nonprofit companies, and lack of interest in arts education.
Every now and then, I highlight some of the recent, noteworthy films that the Boston Globe hasn’t bothered to review. (The Arts Fuse has critiqued a number of them.) Before I posted my earlier lists, I asked for a comment from the Globe arts editors. They have never responded. I will post any defense they have — if they ever send me one.
Silent Friend (foreign)
Kontinental 25 (foreign)
Last One For the Road (foreign)
Jinsei (foreign)
Mare’s Nest (indie)
CAMP (indie, woman director)
Couture (woman director, foreign)
Jackass: Best and Last (comedy/reality feature)
Romería (foreign, woman director)
Night Nurse (indie, woman director)
Summer Tour (doc, woman director — an interview, but no review)
Dead Souls (indie)
Her Private Hell (indie)
Wild Inside (woman director, doc)
Also—whether out of cost-cutting or indifference to expertise is besides the point—the Boston Globe recently dropped three knowledgeable writers from its weekly “The Ticket” feature, a selective, service-oriented guide to arts and events in Boston and nearby communities.
Over a number of years, Maura Johnston (pop), Kevin Lowenthal (jazz), and Stuart Munro (folk, world, and country) brought deep, beat-specific expertise to the roundup. They have largely been replaced by writers who appear to be interns. At the Globe, as in the Trump administration, knowing too much can get you canned.
— Bill Marx, Editor
Latest Views & Reviews from the Fuse
Film
“Bernstein’s Wall ” — A Vivid Portrait of the Artist as Activist
By Jonathan Blumhofer
Douglas Tirola’s documentary draws on a remarkable archive to make Leonard Bernstein’s musical, political, and moral commitments feel urgently contemporary. Read the review
Interview
Clinton Fearon on Reggae, Resilience, and the Songs That Endure
By Noah Schaffer
Ahead of a run of shows with Boston’s Naya Rockers, the veteran Jamaican musician looks back on the Gladiators, Lee “Scratch” Perry, political “sleepwalking,” and a career still driven by curiosity. Read the interview
Music
At Newport Jazz 2026, the Past and Future Jam Side by Side
By Paul Robicheau
Kamasi Washington, Herbie Hancock, Flea and a lively new generation showed how the festival is stretching jazz’s boundaries without losing its center. Read the review
Film
“Scary Movies XIV” Finds Horror in Bodies, Landscapes, and Ecological Ruin
By Steve Erickson
This strong 2026 lineup ranges from a colonial nightmare in the Kalahari to a Japanese ghost story and Carlos Conceição’s chilling vision of cosmetic obsession amid climate catastrophe. Read the review
Television
“Monsters of God” Trades “Tiger King” Chaos for True-Crime Dread
By Sarah Osman
HBO’s docuseries on the illegal reptile trade is less wild than its predecessors, but its sorrowful, criminal undertow makes it unsettling in a different way. Read the review
Film
“Ice Cream Man” Melts Down in a Pool of Blood
By Peg Aloi
Eli Roth’s brightly packaged slasher has an intriguing premise, sweet candy-colored visuals, and impressive effects, but its lazy derivations, forced humor, and AI-generated cartoons leave a sour aftertaste.. Read the review
Visual Arts
“Rothko in Florence” — Against the Solace of Transcendence
By Margherita Artoni
This ambitious catalogue is strongest when it treats Mark Rothko’s paintings as shifting perceptual structures—and weakest when it resolves them into metaphysical comfort. Read the review
Books
Johannes Brahms’s Unwedded Love
By Christina Nellas Acosta
John Worthen’s biography explores the composer’s lifelong devotion to Clara Schumann and its role in shaping his music. Read the review
Weekly Feature: Poetry at The Arts Fuse
This week’s poem is José Antonio Ramos Sucre’s “The Truth”
Read the poem
Right on, Yvonne and Bill. Now, what is the strategy for moving the fuse in to Phil this yawning void? (I’m dictating. I’ll leave Phil in place. Pretty funny.) greater Boston has an enormous diverse in the most diverse sense of the word population eager for informed, professional reporting on the scene in all the arts – exactly what the fuse offers.
I deeply appreciate this editorial. I've been battling this grotesque civilization-killing trend for decades, having begun reviewing arts and culture, specifically due to the shocking paucity of coverage affecting friends, colleagues and clients at the art gallery I worked at, starting in the 1990s, in the first place. There followed three decades of swimming upstream to place art reviews, profiles and features in local, national and international publications, as arts journals and magazines went under, fired most of their staff, or stopped paying contributors. It's NOT edifying watching a culture cut itself off at the knees.