Rick Karr
Rick Karr contributes reports on the arts to NPR News. He is a correspondent for the weekly PBS public affairs show Bill Moyers Journal and teaches radio journalism at Columbia University.
From 1999 to 2004, he was NPR's lead arts correspondent in New York, focussing on technology's impact on culture. Prior to that, he hosted the NPR weekend music and culture magazine show Anthem, and even earlier in his career, worked as a general assignment reporter and engineer at NPR's Chicago bureau.
Rick was nominated for an Emmy award for his 2006 PBS documentary Net @ Risk, which made the case that the U.S. is falling far behind other nations with regard to the speed and power of its internet infrastructure. He's also reported for the PBS shows NOW and Journal Editorial Report.
Rick is a member of the songwriters' collective Box Set Authentic. He lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with his wife, artist Birgit Rathsmann.
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A new play tells the story of the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia. Songwriter Steve Earle used it as a creative challenge to write his forthcoming album, Ghosts of West Virginia. -
Sylvester's 1978 dance hit transcends its moment and even the gay rights and AIDS awareness movements it came to represent. It's an anthem to liberation — of desire, and of the body. -
Nico, 1988 tells the story of the Velvet Underground singer who left for a solo career — one weighed down by her addiction to heroin — and depicts the last, tumultuous year of her life. -
Jim McKay makes movies about New Yorkers who don't often make it to the big screen. His newest, En el Séptimo Día, is about Mexican undocumented workers who gather on the pitch on their only day off. -
From the Queen of England to the hounds of hell, just about anyone can sing its hypnotic riff. Here's why The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" is the world's biggest sports anthem. -
Climate-change activists have launched a campaign to get the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to sever ties with board member Rebekah Mercer, whose family foundation has poured millions of dollars into funding climate change denial organizations.
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The civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" is now in the public domain. The music publishers that copyrighted the song in the 1960s settled the lawsuit on Friday.
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The original score for the 1979 film was never used because the director, Francis Ford Coppola, had a falling out with the composer, David Shire. The lost music is being released for the first time. -
William Eggleston is renowned for making the art world take color photography seriously. He started taking pictures when he was a kid, around the same time he started playing piano. -
Artwork by current and former detainees of Guantanamo Bay is on display at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. But what does the art represent and why did the college choose to display it?
