Arts & Culture

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, that 4th of July feast is just around the corner and many of us are hoping to load our plates with meat, but one cook is saying, why not go vegan? Anupy Singla will share her cookbook, "Vegan Indian Cooking: 140 Simple and Healthy Vegan Recipes." That's in just a few minutes.

The late American artist Ralston Crawford is best known for his Precisionist paintings, abstract representations of urban life and industry post WWI.  But he was also an accomplished photographer, and spent a lot of time in the Crescent City after WWII.

A lesser known body of works on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art is ringing a high note with local music lovers, and we go Inside the Arts for a look at the exhibit — Ralston Crawford and Jazz.

David Henry Hwang is a playwright from Los Angeles, currently living in New York, who has dealt with issues of cultural identity in his work, especially as it pertains to the Asian-American experience. He spoke to NPR's Morning Edition about his thoughts on the American dream.

"I define the American dream as the ability to imagine a way that you want your life to turn out, and have a reasonable hope that you can achieve that.

Nora Ephron brought us two of the most indelible scenes in contemporary cinema — and they're startlingly different.

There's the infamous "Silkwood shower," from the 1983 movie, with Meryl Streep as a terrified worker at a nuclear power plant, being frantically scrubbed after exposure to radiation.

Then there's the scene in which Meg Ryan drives home a point to Billy Crystal at Katz's Deli, in 1989's When Harry Met Sally. You know — the one that ends with "I'll have what she's having."