Elizabeth Blair
Elizabeth Blair is a Peabody Award-winning senior producer/reporter on the Arts Desk of NPR News.
Blair produces, edits, and reports arts and cultural segments for NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. In this position, she has reported on a range of topics from arts funding to the MeToo movement. She has profiled renowned artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Mikhail Baryshnikov, explored how old women are represented in fairy tales, and reported the origins of the children's classic Curious George. Among her all-time favorite interviews are actors Octavia Spencer and Andy Serkis, comedians Bill Burr and Hari Kondabolu, the rapper K'Naan, and Cookie Monster (in character).
Blair has overseen several, large-scale series including The NPR 100, which explored landmark musical works of the 20th Century, and In Character, which probed the origins of iconic American fictional characters. Along with her colleagues on the Arts Desk and at NPR Music, Blair curated American Anthem, a major series exploring the origins of songs that uplift, rouse, and unite people around a common theme.
Blair's work has received several honors, including two Peabody Awards and a Gracie. She previously lived in Paris, France, where she co-produced Le Jazz Club From Paris with Dee Dee Bridgewater, and the monthly magazine Postcard From Paris.
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Brothers Billy and Nick Smith have designed a reusable mask that's knit, not sewn. Seamless and sustainable, it's made from polyester, spandex, nylon and an antimicrobial silver-coated yarn.
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Of the 819 artists and executives invited to join this year, the Academy says 45 percent are women and 36 percent are from underrepresented ethnic and racial communities.
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The Roots drummer, DJ and cookbook author isn't letting a pandemic slow him down — he's still performing on The Tonight Show, and now he's hosting a virtual potluck dinner party on the Food Network.
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Little Richard was an explosive performer who inspired generations of musicians from Otis Redding to The Beatles to David Bowie. He died Saturday morning.
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Live audiences help comics get exposure and work out new material. Colin Quinn says virtual platforms don't replicate "the tension" of being in front of a room full of strangers.
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The package marks $75 million each for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, $7.5 million for the Smithsonian, and $25 million for the Kennedy Center.
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Student Shelbie Rassler, eager to bring her community together amid quarantine and isolation, organized a massive performance of the classic "What the World Needs Now Is Love" and put it on YouTube.
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With schools around the country closing for two weeks or more, parents and caregivers face a stiff challenge: Keep kids active, engaged — and as safe as possible. We've got a few suggestions.
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The grant, thought to be the largest-ever from a philanthropic institution for poetry, will enable the academy to fund its Poets Laureate Fellowship program for the next three years.
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Lehrer chronicled such weighty events as John F. Kennedy's assassination and the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings. For years, he and lifelong friend Robert MacNeil co-anchored The MacNeil/Lehrer Report.