May 29, 2009  |   Geoffrey Rush is well-known for many film roles, including "Shine," for which he won an Academy Award, "Shakespeare in Love" and much more. "Exit the King" is his debut on Broadway, and he's been nominated for a Tony Award for best actor in a play.

May 29, 2009  |   Here are some of this week's arts and culture headlines from public broadcasters around the nation.

May 28, 2009  |   Artist Olafur Eliasson's exhibitions are about you.

May 27, 2009  |   Celebrated Israeli author Amos Oz has published 18 books and is the recipient of numerous literary awards. His recent memoir, "A Tale of Love and Darkness," was an international bestseller.

May 27, 2009  |   Wednesday night on PBS, WNET's American Masters presents the national premier of "Hollywood Chinese," the highly acclaimed documentary that tells the story of Chinese-American cinematic history.

May 26, 2009  |   J. Michael Martinez's collection "Heredities" was selected for the Academy of American Poets' Walt Whitman Award and will be published by Louisiana State University Press. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

May 22, 2009  |   Soul music began in the late-1950s and never really died, but in recent years there seems to be something of a revival underway. One center of that movement is Daptone Records and its most prominent voice, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.

May 22, 2009  |   Here are some of this week's arts and culture headlines from public broadcasters around the nation.

May 21, 2009  |   The city that gave birth to the skyscraper and modern architecture has added a fresh facade to its landscape that is being hailed as a "temple of light." The Art Institute of Chicago opened up its Modern Wing this week.

May 20, 2009  |   These days, everyone is a photographer. Pocket-sized cameras are ubiquitous; Flickr is a phenomenon; Facebook has reinvigorated the photo album and the self-portrait. Lest we forget that this was not always the case, a new exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington looks at an early renaissance of amateur photography that developed in a country about the size of Virginia.

May 19, 2009  |   Witness the weird magic of the Elevator Repair Service. The group has set out to confront "the problem of performance" through its trademark swirl of imaginative choreography and dense soundscapes.

May 18, 2009  |   For 61 seasons, singers have taken to the tiny stage at the Amato Opera Company in Lower Manhattan, delighting audiences with a surprisingly big sound and an even bigger passion for music. But all of that is about to come to an end.

May 18, 2009  |   Jeffrey Schultz's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Great River Review, Northwest Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Willow Springs and elsewhere. He teaches at Pepperdine University.

May 15, 2009  |   The new film, "Sugar," is a dramatic telling of the story of a young Dominican-born baseball player as he learns some lessons about baseball and life at a training camp in his homeland and as a minor league player in Iowa.

May 14, 2009  |   On Tuesday, President Barack Obama and first lady Michele Obama welcomed actors, poets and writers to the East Room of the White House for a night of poetry readings and spoken word.

May 14, 2009  |   The man who painted the Sistine Chapel was actually young once, copying the works of other masters before he became one himself. The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has just acquired a painting done by Michelangelo Buonarroti from when he was 12 or 13 showing St. Anthony being attacked and tormented by demons.

May 13, 2009  |   At the end of last year, "Joe Claus":http://www.joeclaus.com was working at a small electronics company in Silicon Valley doing photography, marketing and design. And then he got laid off. "I was pissed," he said. But there was an unforeseen upside to his loss. No longer stuck behind a desk all day, he devoted more time to his photography.

May 13, 2009  |   Throughout the Depression, an ambitious New Deal project called "America Eats" employed secretaries and unemployed journalists, as well as literary luminaries -- Nelson Algren, Zora Neale Hurston and Eudora Welty -- to research and write about the nation's gastronomic traditions, from debate over mint juleps in the South and differences between clam chowders in the Northeast.

May 12, 2009  |   Jeffery Brown's profile of Mya Lin from Tuesday's program will be posted in Art Beat soon. Below are two extended interviews with Lin.

May 12, 2009  |   While movie stars are gathering on the Riviera for a splashy time at Cannes, moviegoers flocked last weekend to Charm City for the 11th annual Maryland Film Festival. Held at Baltimore's Charles Theater, one of the main attractions is always a film screening by writer-director (and native son) John Waters.

May 11, 2009  |   In March, Jynne Dilling Martin was one of four winners of the 92nd Street Y "Discovery" Poetry Contest, which since 1951 has recognized the achievements of poets who have not yet published a first book.

May 8, 2009  |   Daniyal Mueenuddin new book, "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders," comprises a series of linked stories that explore the lives of peasants and landowners in Pakistan's Punjab.

May 8, 2009  |   To sit down and talk with Russell Goings, you would never guess he came to poetry later in life. Stories rich with allusions drawn from the gods of antiquity to the pioneers of the African-American journey to freedom pour out of Goings in a natural rhythm that reveals his connection to the blues and gospel, Homer and Shakespeare.

May 6, 2009  |   Fans of the groundbreaking TV drama "The Wire" can expect a new David Simon series about life in urban America next year. HBO has reportedly picked up "Treme," a new series about musicians in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

May 5, 2009  |   The nominations for the 2009 Tony Awards bear a distinctly Tinseltown glint, with big- and small-screen heavyweights leading the list. A number of the recognized performers -- Angela Lansbury, James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden, Allison Janney and Jane Fonda, just to name a few -- have had incredibly successful careers on television and in film. And many of the nominated works have been adapted from movies.

May 5, 2009  |   Dom DeLuise -- comedian, actor, chef -- passed away Monday night at the age of 75. His son, Michael DeLuise, told Los Angeles TV station KTLA and radio station KNX that his father died in his sleep at a Santa Monica hospital after a long illness.

May 4, 2009  |   Russell Goings has a BA from Xavier College in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied writing at Fairfield University and the 92nd Street Y. Before he took up writing fifteen years ago, he was a professional football player, the first African American brokerage manager for a New York Stock Exchange Member firm, and founder and chairman for Essence magazine.

May 1, 2009  |   Arthur Phillips, author of "The Song Is You," made a name for himself with his very first novel, "Prague," which became a national bestseller. That was followed by "The Egyptologist" and "Angelica."

May 1, 2009  |   "In the Continuum" reaches across continents to track the separate lives of two young women, one African and the other African-American, as they deal with the grave realities of the AIDS epidemic.