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Grant Shaffer’s Sketchbook

How Hip-Hop Was Made

After photographing London’s nascent punk scene, Janette Beckman moved to New York to chronicle hip-hop’s early days and founding artists—A Tribe Called Quest, Run-DMC, and LL Cool J among them

Yoko Before John

To understand the most misunderstood woman of the last half-century, you have to go back to the beginning

Bohemian Rhapsody

The artist Duncan Hannah’s unpublished 1980s diaries chronicle his run-ins with everyone from Bowie and Basquiat to Warren Beatty and a precocious call girl

Songs with Atmosphere

A selection of 14 songs that defy description

Go Big or Go Home

A new generation is discovering the pleasures of classic movies at Alexander Olch’s Lower East Side revival house, Metrograph

Street Scenes

A collection of Saul Leiter’s newly discovered color photographs offers a rare look at his pioneering, painterly vision

Ludlow, Lady Gaga, and Me

In 2006, Pianos, on Ludlow Street, was a divey service-industry spot attracting the likes of Sweetbitter author Stephanie Danler—and a pre-fame Lady Gaga

Metaphysical Graffiti

For the last decade, Blake Kunin has photographed members of the city’s prolific tag crews at work. His pictures memorialize their conquests—and a city whose street-art scene lives on

The Music Man

From the stage of the San Francisco Opera, Jakub Józef Orliński’s Orpheus enchants the Golden Gate

Acquired Taste

The granddaughter of the River Cafe’s Ruthie Rogers discovers the thrill of cooking, one page at a time

The King of Lies

Separating fact from fiction in the latest, heavily fabricated season of The Crown

The Jewel Is The Crown

Even though Season Five of Netflix’s hit series is a laughable portrait of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, the show’s critics will keep watching

Study in Brown

Down to Business

The Power and the Glory

In 1985, G.E. purchased RCA for $6.3 billion in cash, then the largest M&A deal of all time. That G.E. was actually buying back a business it had started 65 years earlier was largely forgotten

Dreams in Progress

A new book celebrates Hollywood’s greatest behind-the-scenes photographer

Crime Pays

He’s written 37 books and sold more than 80 million copies—yet The New York Times still won’t give Michael Connelly’s well-crafted and timely whodunits a proper review

The Bike Picture

How a long-haired band of outsiders with a 16-mm. camera, $300,000, and “a hell of an idea” re-invented American movies with Easy Rider

The Man Who Knows Don Giovanni

On the eve of a new production in Turin, master maestro Riccardo Muti unlocks the hero’s secrets

Pauline Chalamet

Although the star of The Sex Lives of College Girls grew up in a family of actors, writers, and directors, she resisted a life in the arts for years

Angelica Hicks’s Sketchbook

Luca Guadagnino

Introducing our new Seasoned Traveler feature, a questionnaire devoted entirely to travel routines. First up: the Italian director behind A Bigger Splash, Call Me by Your Name, and the new film Bones and All

A Class Act

The producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater pays tribute to his friend James McMullan, a brilliant artist who has designed its posters for nearly four decades