Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday reading: Amartya Sen on the threat to academic independence in India, Alex Traub on fifty years of New York City landmarks, Tim Parks on how a book is like a key and the brain a lock-maker, Anna Akhmatova on Amedeo Modigliani (born on this day in 1884), and Jed Perl,Ingrid Rowland, Adam Thirlwell, and Jonathan Zimmerman on current exhibitions. There will be no email newsletters next week. We’ll resume on July 22. SPONSORED BY HIRMER PUBLISHERS

India: The Stormy Revival of an International University Amartya Sen The Modi government’s intervention in academic matters has become both unprecedented and politically extreme.   ADVERTISEMENT   The Vanishing City Alex Traub Today in New York there are more than 1,300 individual landmarks, and 114 historic districts encompassing some 33,000 landmarked properties. Yet prior to the landmarks law there was no legal means for protecting historic sites.   The Key to Rereading Tim Parks My first reading of The Waste Land, at age sixteen, was hardly a reading at all. It would take many lessons and cribs and further readings before suddenly Eliot’s approach could begin to awaken recognition and appreciation.   ADVERTISEMENT   Amedeo Modigliani Anna Akhmatova I believe those who describe him didn’t know him as I did, and here’s why. First, I could know only one side of his being—the radiant side. (1975)   DETROIT Jed Perl: The hard labor of the assembly line is reimagined with some of the dignity of dance drama in“Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit”   NEW YORK Ingrid Rowland: “America Is Hard to See” presents a cross-section of the Whitney Museum collection from its beginnings right up to the present   LONDON Adam Thirlwell: Isa Genzken has always had a fractious relationship to history, and in her new exhibition at the ICA you can watch the festive, anguished process of her thinking   CHADDS FORD Jonathan Zimmerman: “I paint it exactly the way it is and exactly the way I see it.” So said Horace Pippin, in the quote that frames thisfascinating exhibit at the Brandywine River Museum