THURSDAY: You'd think Al Gore would be sick of Washington by now. Or maybe that Washington might be sick of him.
It appears that neither is true, though, since he'll be speaking at Lisner Auditorium tonight about his new book, "Our Choice," which details what his own press releases describe as his "years of experience as a student, policymaker, author, filmmaker, entrepreneur and activist to comprehensively describe the real solutions to global warming." Maybe he's counting on the District's college students to take up the torch of responsibility for saving the planet. Good luck with that, Mr. Vice President.
» George Washington University Lisner Auditorium, 730 21st St. NW; Thu., Nov. 5, 7 p.m., $10; 202-994-6800. (Foggy Bottom)
Written by Express' Anne Polsky
Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images
WEDNESDAY: OK, so the "Emerging Cyber Threats" panel at the International Spy Museum will terrify you and cause you to go into a paranoid, password-changing frenzy. But not without good reason: Most of us aren't practicing safe social networking, after all. So stay informed — check out this panel of security experts discussing Internet threats to personal and national security. Then hide under the bed.
» International Spy Museum, 800 F St. NW; Wed., Oct. 28, 6:30 p.m., $15; 202-393-7798, Spymuseum.org. (Gallery Place)
Photo courtesy International Spy Museum
WHETHER YOU'RE A scholar or pop culture buff, you should probably know about Dr. Cornel West. After all, the Yale professor has exhausted practically every arts medium in order to expand your mind.
If you want to engage yourself in West's musings, then you should either read "Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir," or catch him tonight at Busboys and Poets,, where he'll be reading from his latest work, which focuses on his time as an undergraduate at Harvard University, his passion for music and film (yup, that was him in the second and third "Matrix" movies) and his vision for America's future.
West spoke to us about his inspiration for the memoir, his favorite part of teaching and why people (wrongly) don't connect his name with music.
» EXPRESS: What about your life was most important to put in the memoir?
» WEST: I wanted to be true to myself - I am first and foremost my mother's child and my daddy's kid. And I wanted to discuss the power of love … and the power of education, and the fusion of those two and how I was trying to come to terms with my rage - to find constructive channels so that it would become righteous indignation against injustice.
When the Corcoran Gallery of Art opens "Edward Burtynsky: Oil" on Oct. 3, it will be opening a show that curator Paul Roth calls "perfect for Washington."
"A couple years ago, we did a traveling Ansel Adams exhibition, and I wanted to make it unique to Washington, D.C.," said Roth, the senior curator of photography and media arts. "So we decided to focus on Adams as an environmentalist and invited a photographer who does landscape photographs with an environmental slant to come in and talk about their work in the context of Adams' work."
The artist who came in was Burtynsky, and, Roth said, "He told us he was working on putting together 10 years' worth of work on the subject of oil, which I thought was perfect for Washington, along with places like Saudi Arabia or Texas."
Continue Reading "Refined Close-Up on Crude: Edward Burtynsky on the Role of Oil" »
GROWING UP IN Colombia, young Claudia Arbelaez saw a future in fashion. She studied design, showed a small collection during Fashion Week 2004 in her native country, and designed uniforms and the wardrobe for an opera.
Then — poof: Her mother died, Arbelaez met her future husband, and she spent 2006 in Milan to delve into her field. The next year her new husband won a Fulbright, and they moved to a third continent so he could study at the University of Maryland.
Arbelaez looked for a fashion-related job, but nothing around Washington paid well or — after all these changes — had much appeal anymore.
Jewelry did, though. Her mom had loved jewelry, and skills in that area could transfer to Colombia when the couple moved back after two years. "Jewelry is more rewarding because people see more meaning in it than in clothes," she says. "Also, it lasts longer."
Arbelaez enrolled in the jewelry-design certificate program at the Corcoran College of Art + Design (1801 35th St. NW; 202-298-2542; Corcoran.edu/ce). To pay for school and gain experience, she took a low-level jewelry job at Lund Trading in Columbia, Md.
Continue Reading "A Career Set in Gemstones: Claudia Arbelaez's Journey into Jewelry" »
WEDNESDAY: We've all seen James Bond movies. We know that spies and sex go together like gin and olives. The International Spy Museum hosts author H. Keith Melton for a lecture about how spies of both genders have historically used sex to get what they wanted.
This is, of course, an event for those 18 and older, but you needn't be worried that it's only for the prurient among us — Melton will also be showing off Secret Spy Stuff, and everyone loves that.
And hey, we could all use a few romantic tips, even if they're from the armed and dangerous, right?
» International Spy Museum, 800 F St. NW; Wed., July 29, 7:30 p.m., $20; 202-654-2843. (Gallery Place)
Photo courtesy the Mata Hari Foundation
WEDNESDAY: Today would be Arthur Conan Doyle's 150th birthday and, in celebration, the Smithsonian is hosting a lecture and performance in honor of his greatest literary creation — and fiction's finest sleuth — Sherlock Holmes. Mystery writer Daniel Stashower and actor Scott Sedar collaborate to bring you inside Doyle's world and into Holmes' adventures. Extra points if you wear a deerstalker hat.
» Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive SW; Wed., June 17, 6:45 p.m., $45; 202-633-3030. (Smithsonian)
Photo by Marshall S. Berdan
TUESDAY: So you want to see a Ben Affleck thriller, but you don't want to shell out $12 or put up with all that claptrap about the nobility of journalism that runs rampant in "State of Play"? We've got a solution: the Spy Museum is screening "Sum of All Fears" this evening.
Affleck plays a young CIA analyst blah blah race against time blah blah explosion. Real-life CIA analyst John Hedley will give an insider's view of the movie.
» International Spy Museum, 800 F St. NW; Tue., May 12, 6:30 p.m.,$7; 202-393-7798. (Gallery Place)
Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures
WEDNESDAY: Tony Horwitz makes history look easy. He teases out the anecdotes and storylines that catch your attention and get you to fall in love with his subject in a way your high school teacher with the droning voice and endless knowledge of dates never could.
Tonight, Horwitz will be speaking about his latest book, "A Voyage Long and Strange," which deals with the first European explorers in North America.
» Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive SW; Wed., May 6, 7 p.m., $25; 202-633-3030. (Smithsonian)
Photo by Susan Sterner
MONDAY: Art Spiegelman brought the comic book to maturity with his stunning, upsetting "Maus," which won him the Pulitzer Prize. He's gone on to pen funny, strange, fearless comics about his own childhood and 9/11, among other things.
He'll be speaking about the history and importance of comics — we predict he'll name check Pogo, Krazy Kat and Calvin and Hobbes — at the Corcoran tonight.
READ AN INTERVIEW with Art Spiegelman here.
» Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th Street NW; Mon., May 4, 7 p.m., $25; 202-639-1700. (Farragut West)
Photo by Helayne Seidman/The Washington Post
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