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      In Philadelphia, Art Shows by Women Teem With Eros and Audacity

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      Devotees of the human figure, Cecily Brown and Christina Ramberg turn the Benjamin Franklin Parkway into a showplace for the female gaze.Is there such a thing as being too tall to be an artist? Christina Ramberg, the subject of a long-overdue retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, stood 6-foot-1 and considered her height a liability. She grew up in the Eisenhower era, when the average American woman was 5-foot-4 and aspired to have an hourglass figure, and she sewed her own clothes, since standard sizes didn’t fit. As if wanting to somehow shrink herself, she painted images of the female body constrained by fabric — corseted, cinched, girdled and even bound.By a nice coincidence, Cecily Brown, a generation younger than Ramberg and the subject of a retrospective at the nearby Barnes Foundation, is also a devotee of the human figure — but unbound. If Ramberg’s imagery evokes a period when women were tethered to traditional roles and constricting fashions, Brown’s world is just the opposite: untethered and uninhibited.Brown is known for exuberant semi-abstractions, in which gleaming nudes in shifting gradations of salmon pink turn up in French forests and other far-flung places. The two artists could not be more different, but their work teems with eros, emotion and painterly audacity, and it has turned Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the site of both museums, into a temporary capital of the much-heralded female gaze.Christina Ramberg, “Untitled,” 1970-1971. Felt-tip pens, with graphite and colored pencil on ivory wove graph paper.via Philadelphia Museum of ArtRamberg, who died in 1995 and remains underknown, was officially a Chicago Imagist, one of a dozen or so figurative artists who defined their work in opposition to New York, the country’s No. 1 painting town. Spurning abstraction, the Chicago Imagists worked on the margins of cartooning and surrealism. They pursued the rough, often raunchy edges of American culture with a zealousness that made the art of both coasts seem relatively polite.Ramberg’s work is easy to recognize, even from the next room. She painted cropped, centered, fastidiously crafted images that isolated a female hand or a vintage hairdo against a blank ground, as if turning them into heraldic emblems. And she can fairly be called a connoisseur of undergarments. With nearly devotional detail, she captured the texture of different fabrics, contrasting the smooth, blue-black sheen of satin bands with the intricate patterns embedded in lace. Her colors, compared to the screaming hues of other Imagists, tend to be soft and muted, with an emphasis on peachy beiges and grayed lavenders reminiscent of women’s slips.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Cuts Threaten Meals and Services for People With Disabilities and the Aging

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      Every Monday, Maurine Gentis, a retired teacher, waits for a delivery from Meals on Wheels South Texas.“The meals help stretch my budget,” Ms. Gentis, 77, said. Living alone and in a wheelchair, she appreciates having someone look in on her regularly. The same group, a nonprofit, delivers books from the library and dry food for her cat.But Ms. Gentis is anxious about what lies ahead. The small government agency responsible for overseeing programs like Meals on Wheels is being dismantled as part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Roughly half its staff has been let go in recent layoffs and all of its 10 regional offices are closed, according to several employees who lost their jobs.“I’m just kind of worried that the whole thing might go down the drain, too,” Ms. Gentis said.In President Trump ’s quest to end what he termed “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” one of his executive orders promoted cracking down on federal efforts to improve accessibility and representation for those with disabilities, with agencies flagging words like “accessible” and “disability” as potentially problematic. Certain research studies are no longer being funded, and many government health employees specializing in disability issues have been fired.The downsizing of the agency, the Administration for Community Living, is part of far-reaching cuts planned at the H.H.S. under the Trump administration’s proposed budget.While some federal funding may continue through September, the end of the government’s fiscal year, and some workers have been called back temporarily, there is significant uncertainty about the future. And some groups are reporting delays in receiving expected federal funds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Charged With Arson in Vast New Jersey Wildfire

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      A 19-year-old was accused of setting wooden pallets on fire and leaving before the fire was extinguished, sparking what could become the largest blaze in the state in nearly 20 years.An unextinguished bonfire was the cause of one of the largest wildfires in New Jersey for almost 20 years, officials announced on Thursday, and a 19-year-old was accused of sparking the blaze.Joseph Kling, 19, of Waretown, in Ocean Township, has been charged with aggravated arson and arson in connection with the fire.Mr. Kling, who had left the bonfire unattended in the Forked River Mountain Wilderness Area, in Ocean County, was taken into custody at the Waretown police headquarters and is now in the Ocean County Jail.The wildfire, which was first spotted from atop a fire tower in Cedar Bridge on Tuesday morning, has grown rapidly from about 20 to 15,000 acres over three days, shutting down a parkway, destroying a commercial building and affecting air quality from the Pinelands area, in southern New Jersey, to New York City. It is about 50 percent contained, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.Nearly 85 percent of wildfires in the United States are caused by people, according to the United States Forest Service. Risky human activities include unattended campfires, burning debris or discarded cigarettes. The abnormally dry conditions in the southern part of New Jersey provided ample fuel for the unattended bonfire to spread rapidly, officials said. More

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      Las Vegas Sands Drops Bid to Open a Casino on Long Island

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      The company cited the threat that online gambling posed to its profits in its decision to bow out of the competition for one of three casino licenses around New York City.Las Vegas Sands, the casino and resort company that has aggressively maneuvered to build a casino on Long Island in recent years, said on Wednesday that it was dropping its campaign, citing the potential threat posed to its profit margins by online gambling.Casino companies and real estate developers have fiercely competed in recent years for three casino licenses to be awarded by the state in and around New York City. Las Vegas Sands, one of the largest casino companies in the world, has been a leading contender for the right to open a casino on the site of Nassau Coliseum, a large arena just outside New York City.Its decision to drop that bid — over what it said were concerns about “the impact of the potential legalization of iGaming on the overall market opportunity and project returns” — was a major development in the cutthroat competition to bring full-fledged casinos to New York.Other developers who have vigorously pursued bids include Steve Cohen, the owner of the New York Mets, who wants to open a casino at Citi Field in Queens with Hard Rock Entertainment; the Hudson Yards developer Related Companies, which has proposed a casino on the Far West Side of Manhattan with Wynn Resorts; SL Green Realty Corporation, which wants to open a casino in Times Square with Caesars Entertainment; and Bally’s Corporation, which seeks to open one at a site in the Bronx that once housed the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point.In a statement, Sands said it still believed that Nassau Coliseum would be the best location for a new casino. It said it would seek to transfer its right to bid for a license on that site to another company, and would use the money it might have spent on the project to buy shares of Las Vegas Sands and a subsidiary, Sands China.The proposal to open a casino in Nassau County has been met with resistance from community groups as well as Hofstra University, which has said it believes the casino would be too close to its campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYT Crossword Answers for April 24, 2025

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      Kathleen Duncan makes her New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — I’ve said it before in this column, and I will say it again: When it comes to Thursday puzzles, expect anything. Thursday themes will not always be the longest entries in a puzzle; they may not all be Across entries, as thmed entries typically are earlier in the week; and sometimes the letters may even escape the grid.You get the idea.Keep your mind open and flexible for this clever debut by Kathleen Duncan. I had a lot of fun with it, and I think you will, too.Today’s ThemeSometimes theme entries go off in different directions, and that is precisely what is happening in today’s puzzle. We will be making film genres bend to our wills: Each theme clue contains two movies each, and we need to figure out 1) what their genres are, and 2) where we need to bend them.Oh, and that’s why there are dashes in your clue list if you are solving online. The dashes indicate that the remainder of the genre you are solving for is included in that space.For example, the theme clue at 1A is [ “Interview With the Vampire” and “Prince of Thorns”]. The answer is DARK F and then just trails off. That doesn’t make any sense, so something else must be going on. If you look at 5D, where the F is in the first position, the clue is one of those dashes. Boo. That’s no help.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk Backs Away From Washington, but DOGE Remains

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      As Elon Musk sought to reassure Wall Street analysts on Tuesday that he would soon scale back his work with the federal government, the strain of his situation was audible in his voice.The world’s richest man said that he would continue arguing that the Trump administration should lower tariffs it has imposed on countries across the world. But he acknowledged in a subdued voice that whether President Trump “will listen to my advice is up to him.”He was not quite chastened, but it was a different Mr. Musk than a couple months ago, when the billionaire, at the peak of his power, brandished a chain saw onstage at a pro-Trump conference to dramatize his role as a government slasher.Back then, Mr. Musk was inarguably a force in Washington, driving radical change across the government. To the president, he was a genius; to Democrats, he was Mr. Trump’s “unelected co-president”; to several cabinet secretaries, he was a menace; and to G.O.P. lawmakers, he was the source of anguished calls from constituents whose services and jobs were threatened by cuts from his Department of Government Efficiency.As Mr. Musk moves to spend less time in Washington, it is unclear whether his audacious plan to overhaul the federal bureaucracy will have lasting power. The endeavor has already left an immense imprint on the government, and Mr. Musk has told associates that he believes he has put in place the structure to make DOGE a success. But he has still not come close to cutting the $1 trillion he vowed to find in waste, fraud and abuse.Elon Musk and President Trump looked at new Tesla car models at the White House in March.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Stunning New Pool in Central Park Helps Heal Old Wounds

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      For more than a century and a half, Central Park has been a leafy barometer of New York’s shifting fortunes. Projecting the city’s vast ambitions and ideals in the 19th century, it morphed into a Hooverville during the Depression, becoming a beehive of ball fields and “Be-Ins” during the 1960s.A decade later it was a lawless dust bowl, the poster child for urban decline. “An unattended Frankenstein,” one city parks commissioner called it.Restoring Central Park’s glory has been a labor of decades, its maintenance an endless task. But the $160 million Davis Center, opening to the public Saturday, is a culmination of sorts.The Davis Center, under construction, with the pavilion tucked underneath the hill to the left and the pool covered by artificial turf for the spring season.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesIt’s a spectacular new swimming pool, skating rink and pavilion on six remade acres at the Harlem end of the park — the most dramatic change in years to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s pastoral masterpiece of the 1850s.This northern stretch of the park was shamefully neglected when the city was at its nadir and it became the site of a brutal attack that led to one of the more horrendous miscarriages of racial justice in New York’s history.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      DOGE to Dismantle Millennium Challenge Corporation

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      The Trump administration has begun dismantling a small independent agency that aids the economic development of poor but stable nations, according to five people familiar with the matter.Employees for the agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, were told in an email that they would be offered early retirement or deferred resignation after visits last week from Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting team, according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times.“We understand from the DOGE team there will soon be a significant reduction in the number of MCC’s programs and relatedly the agency’s staff,” read an email sent to staff on Tuesday by the acting chief executive. Staff members were given until Tuesday to decide whether to accept an offer to step down or have their employment terminated as soon as May 5, according to the email.The White House declined to comment Wednesday on the planned cuts at the agency.Mr. Musk’s team, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, has in recent weeks moved to gut several federal agencies and entities that work on foreign aid and development projects. That includes the U.S. African Development Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which would shrink to just the legally required 15 positions after employing about 10,000 people before the start of the Trump administration.The Millennium Challenge Corporation is much smaller — roughly 300 employees, mostly in Washington, with about 20 people in offices overseas. But like U.S.A.I.D., it is slated to be reduced to the minimum required by law, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about internal conversations.The agency, established by Congress in 2004, was conceived by President George W. Bush as a way to aid poor nations while holding them accountable for using U.S. funds responsibly. The agency’s annual budget is a relatively modest $1 billion. It provides grants directly to foreign governments for development projects, including ones aimed at limiting the influence of China in Asia and Africa.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More