I don’t really get the West. I find it hard to conjure up an image of a fruited plain or purple mountain that isn’t Hanna Barbera-esque. When I used to play the Oregon Trail computer game, my covered-wagon-mates would all perish before you could say “Donner Party.” I’m the kind of New York snob who, throughout all her out-of-tristate American experiences, keeps up a constant refrain of “Aren’t the people so nice?” and “Aren’t the portions so big?”

So when I found myself at the Denver International Airport, standing between a Starbucks and a tornado shelter, I started panicking. Read More

In the two years since I became an arts journalist, my interaction with art has been marked by weird flukes, awkward mishaps and, generally, bizarre situations. I conducted an interview with pop-music princess Katy Perry, who had just been painted, nude, on a cotton candy cloud, by Will Cotton; I nervously perched on a $28 million Eileen Gray chair at Christie’s; I almost spooned with Marina Abramović on a giant beanbag in Atlanta.

Throughout, I’ve often had the sneaking suspicion that I’m the wrong woman for the job. After all, I’m a veritable queen of calamity, prone to bumping into priceless objets. And I wondered, as perhaps most of us do, whether I was actually any good at looking at art—I get fidgety staring at anything for more than a few minutes. Read More