The last ten years have been the most transparent in the history of the United Nations. Scholars, reporters and the public learned more about the machinations behind UN scenes than they ever had before. But that openness may be difficult for Ban Ki-Moon, the new Secretary-General, to maintain. Ban is a veteran South Korean diplomat, and diplomats are notorious for their joy at working in secret and commenting afterwards in words of mush. In one of his first interviews, Ban boasted to Warren Hoge of the New York Times that the press in South Korea used to call him "the slippery eel" because "they could never grab me..."

'Designing a New World: 1914-1939' shows how a movement moved a century function forward. Exhibition showcases the legacy of Modernism's breakaway style. When portions of "Ulysses" first appeared in a literary magazine from 1918 to 1920, its Irish author, James Joyce, wanted the world to know that he had created a new kind of novel, resembling nothing that came before. When Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" premiered in Paris in 1913, the Russian composer's music was so dissonant, new and shocking that the audience rioted. Other artists such as the painter Pablo Picasso, architect Le Corbusier, designer Marcel Breuer and filmmaker Fritz Lang wanted to do the same: break completely with the past and re-create their form of art, taking it to new and different heights...

The enthusiasts who stormed into Iraq are incapable of letting go. It is not so much that President Bush and Vice President Cheney cannot face defeat. Far more important, they cannot face the enormity of the mindlessness that powered them to war. So they are hanging on with a stubborn show of honor and even political courage, persuaded that, despite their mistakes and misadventures, history will absolve them. To keep on in the face of congressional harassment and public discontent, they are spewing a lot of cant about terrorism, micromanagement, chaos and patriotism. It is not easy to see the awful situation clearly...

John Singer Sargent put portraits aside to capture the workings of an ethereal city... John Singer Sargent was the most popular portrait painter of his day, but the tedium of the work often oppressed him. In letters to friends, he liked to mock his lucrative success in what he called "paughtraits." He found it a nuisance "to entertain the sitter and to look happy when one feels wretched." When he took time off from the portraits, he would say, "No more mugs!" Accompanied by friends and family, and armed with oils and watercolors, he would leave his London studio every year for a long vacation, usually to the Alps in the summer and then south to Venice in the fall...

Smithsonian exhibition explores a world trader's legacy. In the 1400s, decades before the voyages of Christopher Columbus, sailors from little Portugal braved the oceans to map the world, carry back spices and other treasures, spread Christianity and set down an empire that would extend in the next two centuries from Africa to India to China to Brazil. The impact was enormous. Europe was inundated with images and objects from the outside world. And, from then on, the rest of the world would never escape the influence of Europe...

Recent weeks have brought us so much blather about the war in Iraq that it is difficult to hold on to realities. But let’s try. The President gave us his latest speech on Iraq in September. I often wonder who listens to him any more, who believes him any more. Yet I can’t help finding a certain fascination with his oratory. I am always astonished at what he will come up with next. He has a new though clunky slogan: Return on Success. Since the success is imperceptible, his pullback of troops is insignificant. But he does not say that, of course...

In a Washington exhibition, the British painter's wide-ranging influence is seen through the swirls and mists of his search for the sublime. A dramatic exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1966 set the way many Americans still look at the works of the British painter Joseph Mallord William Turner. By then, Turner had been dead for more than a century -- hardly a conventional subject for a temple of Modern art. But, by concentrating on his later paintings, filled with swirls of color and light and mists and fire and storm, the museum hailed Turner as a godfather of French Impressionism and, even more important, a precursor of American Abstract Expressionism. The show prompted abstract painter Mark Rothko to joke, "That guy Turner learned a lot from me!" Now, another major exhibition, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, is trying to put Turner in better perspective...

A talented, ambitious woman whose judgment is clouded by intense loyalty. In late August 2005, Condoleezza Rice stepped into a Broadway theater to see the musical "Spamalot." At the end, when the lights came on, some in the audience noticed the secretary of State. Evidently angry about both the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, they stood up and booed. A careful, well-documented new biography, "Condoleezza Rice: An American Life," will not dissipate such anger. Elisabeth Bumiller, who covered the White House for the New York Times during most of George W. Bush's presidency, has labored to present an evenhanded look at Rice. She shows some sympathy for her subject and even more understanding. But, in the end, this is a portrait of a talented, ambitious woman who has allowed intense loyalty to cloud her judgment and good sense...