Last year, social distancing ruled our cultural lives. We stayed home for the most part with our books, TVs and personal screens, venturing out if we were lucky for the occasional porch concert or staged event viewed from the safety of our cars. This year, as vaccines became widely available, movie theaters started to reopen in spring, then museums and playhouses. Concerts returned; nightclubs filled. Of course, we still aren’t back to a pre-COVID normal. Masks stay on when we join an audience, and with each new coronavirus variant we approach future plans with caution. But through it all, arts and entertainment creators pressed forward, helping us make sense of our times and sometimes providing welcome escape.
Looking back, 2021 was a year of triumph and tragedy. Read on as our critics and reporters reflect on the year in entertainment and the storylines that grabbed headlines, plus our top picks in the year’s books, movies, theater, television, music, video games, art, architecture and more.
The crisis of democracy is a media crisis. And the mainstream press is losing
‘Spider-Man,’ streaming wars, a strike (almost) and everything that defined Hollywood in 2021
The 100 best songs of 2021
Sitting in the audience in 2021 required a dramatic trust fall
There is no script to get us ‘back to normal.’ ‘Normal-adjacent’ will have to do
The 20 best books of 2021
The best movies of 2021 — and where to find them
From NFTs to long-overdue reckonings, 10 things that shaped the art world in 2021
How Taylor Swift reclaimed 2012 to win 2021
Ali: The 11 best TV shows of 2021
Lloyd: The 13 best TV shows of 2021
The faces and facets of classical music’s year of emergence
Ten reasons to be grateful in another sputtering theatrical year
For fans, artists and concert industry, a chaotic 2021 gives way to a suddenly perilous 2022
The year of the party tent: What the age of COVID taught us about architecture in 2021
The 10 best albums of 2021
The year in Latin music: Bad Bunny takes flight and Chente is laid to rest
From Britney to the Beatles, it was a watershed year for music documentaries
In 2021, play became a way to think about life
The 10 essential games of 2021 that helped us define who we are now
The 5 best books of 2021, according to Jessica Ferri
The 5 best fiction books of 2021, according to Mark Athitakis
The 5 best nonfiction books of 2021, according to Mary Ann Gwinn
The 5 best novels of 2021, according to Bethanne Patrick
Commentary: It’s been a year to rethink Bach’s ‘Brandenburg’ Concertos

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