Across the country this is a tough time for small arts groups because state grants have largely shriveled up. Much of America’s artistic activity does not happen in major recital halls and theaters; instead it occurs...where smaller arts organizations are highly dependent on state grants.

A year after controversy engulfed plans to build a Muslim community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, the project’s developers are quietly moving ahead: In recent months they have hired a paid staff, started fund-raising drives and continued holding prayers and cultural events in their existing building two blocks from ground zero.

Americans' confident belief in the uniqueness, yes the exceptionalism, of their country, rested on an essential faith in liberty, and individualism and anti-statism at home, and in the power of our example, and muscle now and then, in foreign lands. Mr. Obama is ill-at-ease with that worldview. Our country has had pessimism on offer and has invariably rejected it.

In an unusual project, Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio, a photographer and writer, traveled the world collecting photos and stories about what people eat in a day. The photos...have been selected for an unusual exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston. The result is an anthropological exploration of the culture of eating that is by turns mouthwatering, repulsive and surprising.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera has not gained distribution on any major cable or satellite systems in the United States. On Monday, the channel will be carried in New York City for the first time, though only by subletting space from a channel owner...it is finding out that cable and satellite distributors wield an enormous amount of control over the channels that viewers in the United States can and cannot see.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is part think tank, part open-air forum, part community center. New York will be the first stop for the lab on a worldwide tour that will also include Berlin and Mumbai. In each city curators will invite leaders in fields including architecture, art, design, technology, education and science to participate in programs: lectures, workshops, games, performances and film screenings.

The East-West Center is a Hawaii-based, federally supported institution, long a key part of U.S. outreach to the countries of the Asia and the Pacific and a fixture in Honolulu.