An interesting battle about the future of contemporary art — and what should be shown in museums devoted to it — is occurring in Los Angeles right now, where the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art is accused of leaning too heavily on pop culture/celebrity trendiness for his shows.
  

Music of Change: Hymns, Blues & Rock at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center ultimately succeeds in providing a fascinating journey through the roles black music have played in America’s history, eloquently showing how African-American music has been celebration, protest, spiritual uplift, a means of communication and information sharing … sometimes all at once.
  

There is a palpable arid and hollow feeling throughout much of Dave Eggers’ magnificent new novel, A Hologram For The King. It is set in Jeddah, on the Saudi Arabian coast, and peopled by characters who seem adrift in the vast desert and alien to their own sense of self.  

Beautiful Ruins is a novel filled with unforgettable characters who have insatiable appetites for all the things that success brings. Much of the charm of the novel is Walter’s ability to transport us to far-flung locations both wondrous and thrilling. It’s also a cautionary tale with some unconventional and unique methods of storytelling.  

Go up the imposing staircase at Thompson House, continue past the second floor and on to the third, and you’ll be in the Thompson House Shooting Gallery, where art is the weapon at hand.
  

Rather than focus on one venue, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company delivers its Shakespeare in the Park Tour to more than a dozen parks and outdoor venues throughout the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area. The first of CSC’s touring performances will be on Saturday with the 7 p.m. opening of The Tempest at Seasongood Pavilion in Eden Park.  

Former visiting professor at the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP Fashion Department Henry Navarro has returned to Cincinnati for Mis-Measured and a site-specific fashion-based public art project inspired by Cincinnati itself.
  

The process of translating clichés into high humor is a delicate one. Luckily for Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, the able three actors assembled for a very tongue-in-cheek retelling of the Sherlock Holmes tale The Hound of the Baskervilles know their way around slapstick and shtick.  

A hybrid of opera, music theater and performance piece, the surreal storyline follows Maria from birth to her arrival in Buenos Aires, where tango seduces her and leads to a life of prostitution. She is murdered and resurrected, becoming the embodiment of tango.
  

If you want to learn about one of the biggest and most unusual public-art projects ever proposed for Cincinnati, see the display related to “The Soap at Baton Rouge” at Carl Solway Gallery’s current Thanks: 50th Anniversary Celebration.  

Jerome Jaffe is a character. With his thick New York accent, wiry frame, perma-five o’clock shadow and penchant for misnomers, he’s kind of a minor celebrity in his home base of Brighton in the West End. He recently bought Rake’s End from long-time area resident/developer Fred Lane, and is determined to see the bar succeed.  

George M. Cohan could easily have been mistaken for a whole crowd of people: The American entertainer was known as a playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. He is the individual who most shaped the art form of American musical comedy. In 1968, the musical George M! took Cohan’s life and made it into a show — a logical step for a man who spent most of his own career writing and performing in his own productions.  

NVISION, Emily Buddendeck's quirky venture at 4577 Hamilton Ave. in Northside, has grown steadily during its four-and-a-half years of existence. “I opened on Leap Day of Leap year, Feb. 29, 2008. The day seemed appropriate because the shop was even more of a leap during a recession, but it really merged the various things I had been doing, career-wise,” she says.
  

This time of year there’s not much theater in town, something I usually grouse about. But that scarcity pushed me in a different direction this year: I bought tickets to the World Choir Games, and, boy, was I glad I did. I saw as much drama in those 11 days as I’ve seen in many theater seasons — entertaining, passionate, talented and eye opening.
  

In one of those rare places people still come to browse for books, they are encased in glass. Touched by the hands of artists, they suspend like paper time capsules in the atrium of the Cincinnati Public Library for Bookworks 13, organized by Cincinnati Book Arts Society.