Latinos In America

By J.S. MARCUS

In the burgeoning world of artisanal cheese, Ireland is a land of legend. Starting in the 1970s, a small group of self-taught cheesemakers, centered in the western reaches of County Cork, helped usher in a fine-food revolution by turning an eccentric hobby into an influential craft. By adapting Continental cheesemaking techniques to their remote maritime setting, they managed to transform obscure Celtic names—like Gubbeen, Durrus and Milleens—into internationally recognized gourmet brands.

Now Irish farmhouse cheeses have grown up, as a second generation of cheesemakers has reached adulthood and often diversified their businesses. Along the way, several of Ireland’s best cheesemakers have opened up their farms to visitors, making it possible to tour the country with nothing but fine cheese on your itinerary.

“Ireland would be one of the fun tours,” says Rob Kaufelt, the owner of Murray’s Cheese Shop, a prime New York cheesemonger, talking about options for cheese-loving travelers. The country is a great choice, he says, “because of the people,” and because of the uniqueness of the cheese itself. “Irish grass is noteworthy,” he says, and he wouldn’t “mistake Irish cheese for anything else.”

All of Ireland’s cheese-lined roads lead to County Cork, in the southwest of the country, but the place to start is in the heart of Dublin, at Sheridans Cheesemongers, the capital’s best-known cheese outlet. The small shop will surround you with the best of the season, from Kilree, a new washed-rind goat cheese, which won best-in-show at the 2011 British Cheese Awards, to classics like Gubbeen, the most approachable of Cork’s now classic washed-rind varieties.

For centuries, Irish milk was used for just about everything but fine cheese, and the shop’s co-owner Kevin Sheridan says that “a lack of tradition” helped to inspire the country’s recent wave of cheesemakers. “There were no constraints,” he says. “People imported ideas, but made them very much their own.”

Mr. Sheridan says that Ireland’s innovation in cheesemaking has also spread to the way people actually eat cheese here. No longer following the French model, which dictates that a cheese selection “is something to be enjoyed after dinner in a formal setting,” the Irish now feel free to experiment. “You’re watching a movie on a Saturday night,” he says, “and you grab a bit of Cashel Blue,” the rich, nearly rindless blue cheese from County Tipperary.

On Saturdays, Sheridans has a stand at the Temple Bar Food Market just off the Wellington Quay on the River Liffey, where you can also find a stand operated by Corleggy Cheeses, the County Cavan producer of raw-milk hard cheeses from cow, goat and sheep milk.

There is now a huge range of fine-food producers in Ireland, from innovative black-pudding makers to craft breweries. Mr. Sheridan says that the farmhouse cheesemakers cut a path for that wider movement. They “were absolutely in the avant-garde,” he says. “Cheesemakers led a revival in Irish food.” Across the Liffey from Temple Bar, at the six-year-old Winding Stair restaurant, Irish ingredients have pride of place on the menu, and a daily fixture is an Irish farmhouse-cheese plate.

If you want to put Irish farmhouse cheeses in the broadest foodie context, a great place to visit is Fallon & Byrne, a central Dublin gourmet grocery store and restaurant complex. Upon request, you can customize a cheese board in the downstairs wine bar, mixing and matching Irish and imported varieties.

Joanne Murphy

The cheese counter at Fallon & Byrne in Dublin

Irish farmhouse cheeses “have great character,” says Rachel Firth, Fallon & Byrne’s cheese buyer, “because they’re made by characters.” She is especially fond of Milleens, the very first of the County Cork washed-rind cheeses, which has now been taken over by Quinlan Steele, the 32-year-old son of the founders. He has used scientific analysis to perfect his family’s four-decade-old cheese recipe. Milleens is “wonderful at the moment,” Ms. Firth says.

A journey southward to Cork will lead through the lush, green pastures of County Kilkenny, where Helen Finnegan, who makes Kilree, started Knockdrinna Farm House Cheese in 2004. Ms. Finnegan, 49, uses organic white wine as a wash, allowing natural yeasts to finish her cheeses. In 2009, she opened a shop next to the cheesemaking facilities, and this year, she began monthly on-site cheesemaking classes.

Before heading south to County Cork, take a scenic detour to western Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, a dramatic extension of County Kerry, divided in two by the Slieve Mish mountains. In the seaside town of Dingle, stop at the Little Cheese Shop, started up in 2010 by the peninsula’s best-known artisanal cheesemaker, Maja Binder, a 40-year-old native of Germany’s Black Forest, who has won accolades for Dilluskus, a semihard cow’s milk cheese flavored with seaweed.

Ms. Binder, who lives on the other side of the mountain range from Dingle, welcomes visitors to her farm, which overlooks an unspoiled stretch of pastures and beaches. “I have had an amazing year,” reports Ms. Binder, who attributes the “extremely creamy” quality of her latest batches to a new local milk supplier.

Then head south to the rain-drenched coastal grandeur of West Cork, where modern Irish farmhouse cheese got its start decades ago. The washed-rind technique is associated with great French cheeses like Reblochon, Vacherin and Munster. Irish versions tend to be more buttery, say many aficionados, due to the richness of the milk.

West Cork has little of the lushness of eastern Ireland, says Jeffa Gill, one of the area’s cheesemaking pioneers, who is based on the Sheep’s Head Peninsula. Rather, she says, “it is rock and bog,” with “rougher grazing” that gives the milk its distinctive properties. This roughness also makes for some of Ireland’s most picturesque scenery.

Starting this year, Ms. Gill has increased activities for visitors. She has opened a showroom for cheese tastings, and organizes seasonal walks on the peninsula, led by her son-in-law, who is a geologist. Visitors are asked to visit by appointment only.

A neighboring West Cork peninsula is home to Gubbeen cheese, started by a onetime London curator, Georgiana Ferguson, who turned a longing for Ireland into a thriving premium food business. She first settled in the area in the 1970s, making cheese on her kitchen stove for her family—”in the ham pot on the Aga,” as she puts it. Ms. Ferguson, 63, loves the washed-rind technique. “As soon as you wash cheese,” she says, “you create this slithery, slimy, smelly, delicious, wonderful funky rind.”

Fingal, the Fergusons’ 35-year-old son, has expanded the brand to include a charcuterie line. Ireland’s economic crisis has led many consumers to rediscover homegrown products, and like others in the Irish cheese world, Ms. Ferguson reports a general upturn in business. “The Irish are buying Irish,” she says.

The Fergusons don’t welcome drop-ins, but you can sample the best of their products at local farmers’ markets in the nearby towns of Bantry, Skibbereen and Schull.

Visitors are always welcome at Milleens, on the Beara Peninsula, down the coast from Ms. Gill’s farm. Here, Veronica Steele, a Dublin native, and her English-born husband, Norman, began experimenting with farmhouse-style cheese in the mid-1970s, later inspiring both Ms. Gill and Ms. Ferguson.

“We welcome people who have a passion,” says their son Quinlan Steele, who took over in 2002. “If people have a genuine passion, I can talk to them all day.”

By GAIL MONAGHAN

AIOLI IS ALL ABOUT the garlic. This pungent sauce—often considered merely an excuse to eat the hallowed bulb—is not for the timid. Prepared properly, the rich and creamy condiment literally reeks of garlic.

In “Lulu’s Provençal Table,” legendary food writer Richard Olney’s 1994 memoir of befriending and dining with Lulu Peyraud, proprietor of vineyard Domaine Tempier and producer of some of Provence’s best wines and meals, the author writes about falling hard for the traditional sauce affectionately referred to as “the butter of Provence.” Aioli, he writes, deriving from the French “ail” (garlic) and “oli” (the old langue d’oc word for olive oil)—has two meanings: First, it’s a thick, aromatic garlic mayonnaise that accompanies various foods including cold roasts, poached fish and boiled vegetables, and even serves as a tasty thickener for fish soup. Second, the word refers to “le grand aioli,” an abundant Provençal meal traditionally consisting of a cornucopia of vegetables, meats and seafood accompanied by an aioli sauce. Particularly popular in summer when fresh, juicy garlic and just-picked vegetables are available, grand aioli is often served at small-town gatherings and on saints’ days.

My version of the culinary extravaganza is derived from Lulu’s and includes cod, mussels, octopus, chicken, a bevy of vegetables and, to garnish, hard-boiled eggs and cherry tomatoes.

As all of the food—other than the mussels and octopus ragout—is generally served at room temperature, a grand aioli is ideal for summer entertaining. To ensure that the rich sauce commands center stage, the other ingredients are prepared quite simply. With everything smothered in aioli and accompanied by good, crusty bread and lots of Provençal wine, guests will depart singing your praises. And you will have hosted a surprisingly easy dinner party—particularly true if you dare to follow the example of the French villagers who have guests bring their own plates, glasses, cutlery and napkins.

There are said to be as many recipes for le grand aioli as there are cooks in Provence, and I sometimes feel that over the years I’ve made them all. However, due to my recent lovefest with octopus, Lulu’s ingredients of choice are my current favorites. The combination of cod, mussels and chicken, along with platters of vegetables, is light, bright and summery. It’s a perfect counterpart to the garlicky mayonnaise. The octopus ragout—mellow, succulent and mildly exotic—provides a welcome depth of flavor without the heaviness of beef and mutton that appear in some versions that I like to save for winter.

“The octopus—mellow, succulent and mildly exotic—provides a welcome depth of flavor.”

Whatever components you end up choosing will be enthusiastically consumed as long as your aioli is spot on. Meat, fish and vegetables may vary; but one thing everyone agrees on is that making the sauce with a mortar and pestle is far superior to making it in a blender or food processor. The preferred method produces a very thick—authentic aioli is almost solid—robust and deep yellow condiment in contrast to the paler, smoother food-processor version. If you lack a large mortar and pestle but still want to make traditional aioli, you can crush the garlic and salt together with the flat side of a knife, then place the resulting pulp in a bowl and slowly whisk in the oil and then the remaining ingredients.

Abundant garlic is imperative for all methods. In her 1962 book “French Provincial Cooking,” Elizabeth David, another great food writer, tells us that with the use of less garlic, “you are likely to find that the mass of eggs and oil is then too heavy and rich.” A true aioli, she writes, “tingles your throat as you swallow it.” Ms. David goes on to provide a Provençal antidote for those who have overindulged, explaining that locals combat garlic-induced indigestion with a small glass of marc, the local spirit, taken as a digestif in the middle of the meal.

And for those of you who still fear for your breath, Provençal wisdom recommends a sprig of parsley, fresh mint leaves, a few coffee beans or a yummy piece of dark chocolate to cap off the repast.

Le Grand Aioli

An extravagant yet rustic mélange of seafood, chicken, vegetables, eggs and, of course, aioli, that thrills both the eye and the palate.

Hands-On Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 2 hours Serves: 12

1½ pounds green beans, parboiled in salted water until al dente, about 5 minutes

12 small potatoes, boiled

12 small artichokes, trimmed and boiled in salted water, cut in half vertically, chokes removed

12 medium beets, baked and quartered

12 small sweet potatoes, baked

16 small peeled carrots, raw or parboiled in salted water until al dente, about 12 minutes

2 bulbs of fresh fennel, trimmed and cut vertically into eighths

2 pints cherry tomatoes

12 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and halved

1 rotisserie chicken, cut into 12 pieces

2 pounds poached, grilled or roasted cod, grouper or halibut fillet (other white fish—such as bass, swordfish or hake—may be substituted)

Octopus Ragout (recipe below)

Steamed Mussels (recipe below)

Aioli Sauce (recipe below)

What To Do

1. Arrange vegetables, eggs, chicken, fish and octopus attractively on large platters. Serve mussels from a serving bowl and place some of the cooking liquid in small bowls to be sipped as a soup or to dip the bread into.

2. Place aioli in bowls or mortars on the table or in the center of each platter.

Aioli Sauce

Hands-On Time: 20 minutes Makes: Approximately 3 cups

¼ teaspoon salt, or more, to taste

20 garlic cloves, peeled

4 egg yolks

3 cups extra-virgin olive oil

2-3 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

*all ingredients must be at room temperature

1. Place salt and garlic in a large marble or stone mortar. With a wooden pestle, crush and pound garlic and salt until reduced to a paste.

Food Processor or Blender Aioli

Hands-On Time: 5 minutes

Makes: Approximately 3 cups

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon salt, or more, to taste

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or more, to taste

5-20 garlic cloves, peeled

1½ tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more, to taste

2-2½ cups extra-virgin olive oil

*all ingredients must be at room temperature

1. Process eggs, salt, pepper, garlic and lemon juice in a food processor or blender until combined.

2. With the motor running, add oil, a few drops at a time. After about 1/3 of oil has been added, add remaining oil in a very slow steady stream.

3. Add salt and lemon juice, to taste.

2. Add yolks and stir briskly with pestle or a wooden spoon until color lightens.

3. Keep stirring and add oil by droplets very slowly along the mortar’s side until aioli begins to thicken (this will take a few minutes). When about half the oil has been used, aioli should be a thick mass. Add lemon juice, to taste, and rest of oil in a thin stream, stirring constantly.

4. Add oil until desired consistency is reached. Sauce should be almost solid. Add more salt to taste and refrigerate until needed. The sauce can be made up to 48 hours in advance, covered and refrigerated. Serve in the mortar in which you have made it or in a small bowl.

Notes: If the sauce fails to emulsify, place another room-temperature egg yolk in a clean bowl and very gradually whisk the curdled mixture into it. For those averse to eating raw eggs, you can make an eggless aioli by crushing peeled garlic and one boiled peeled potato in a mortar. When the mixture becomes a paste, very slowly add oil while constantly whisking. Then add lemon juice, salt and pepper, to taste.

Octopus Ragout

Providing a welcome depth of flavor, this stew is divine and unexpected when paired with aioli.

Total Time: 1½ hours Serves: 12

8 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 large yellow onions, finely chopped

6 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

3 large tomatoes, seeded and coarsely chopped

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

5 pounds octopus, preferably small ones, cleaned but unskinned, cut into bite-size pieces (see note)

1 large bay leaf

9 tablespoons cognac or marc de Provence

¾ cup dry white wine

1/3 cup parsley, roughly chopped

What To Do

1. In a large frying pan, warm 5 tablespoons oil with onions and garlic. Stirring frequently, cook over low heat until light golden, about 10 minutes.

2. Turn heat to high and add tomatoes and salt and pepper, to taste. Saute, tossing often, until tomato liquid has evaporated, 5-10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, in a large heavy saute pan, heat remaining 3 tablespoons oil. Add octopus, bay leaf and salt and pepper, to taste. Stir frequently until liquid thrown off by octopus has come to a full boil.

5. Remove from heat and add cognac. Ignite it. Stir until the flames die down.

6. Bring white wine to a boil in a small saucepan and add it to the octopus. Warm stew over medium heat and boil until reduced by one third, about 10 minutes. Add tomato mixture.

7. Bring back to a boil and then reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer.

8. Cook uncovered and stir often until octopus is very tender but still resilient, about 50 minutes. Adjust seasoning, garnish with parsley and serve. (Can be served at room temperature.)

Note: To ensure optimum tenderness, octopus should be frozen for at least 24 hours before using and then defrosted in the refrigerator. Once thawed, cut bodies, heads and tentacles into bite-size pieces.

—Adapted from Richard Olney’s “Lulu’s Provençal Table” (Ten Speed Press)

Steamed Mussels With Shallots and Olive Oil

Great with crusty bread or as part of this meal.

Total Time: 15 minutes Serves: 12

½ cup peeled and minced shallots

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

½ cup water

3 pounds mussels, scrubbed and debearded

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

½ cup parsley, roughly chopped

What To Do

1. Put shallot, oil and water in a stockpot or large saucepan over high heat. Bring to a rolling boil; boil rapidly for 1 minute.

2. Add mussels and cover pot. Cook until mussels open, 5-10 minutes. Taste broth and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Ladle cooking liquid into small bowls for dipping. Transfer mussels to a serving bowl and serve hot, warm or at room temperature, sprinkled with parsley.

A version of this article appeared July 28, 2012, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Midsummer Grand Aioli.

By JANE PORTER

Job prospects for M.B.A. graduates are better than they were just a year ago, but connecting students with positions has career centers at business schools operating in overdrive.

Jana Kierstead, managing director for M.B.A. career and professional development at Harvard Business School, says the career recruiting budget increased 50% in the past year to help boost efforts to help students find jobs.

In February, when Ms. Kierstead saw that job offers were down 10% from a year before, the career office became more active in engaging new employers, using conferences in Shanghai, London, and Paris to drum up employer interest.

To help students offset the cost of traveling for interviews—something a number of companies no longer pay for—Harvard also started a fellowship fund that gives students up to $500 to cover costs of travel, Ms. Kierstead says.

At the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, the employer-development staff tripled to bolster efforts to identify companies hiring globally, says Julie Morton, associate dean of career services.

Chicago has also taken to the road to seek out employers, hosting panels in sectors and cities where the school is less recognized, says Ms. Morton.

At Stanford, an online platform tested with more than 200 students this spring allowed them to indicate what fields and companies they were interested in. School officials then pursued connections with those firms. “We are almost able to act like an eHarmony between students, alumni and companies,” says Pulin Sanghvi, director of Stanford’s career management center.

The efforts seem to be paying off. At Harvard, 85% of graduates looking for jobs had offers by graduation. At Chicago, nearly 80% of graduates had an offer two weeks before graduation. And at Stanford, job postings on the career service website were up nearly 70% this year over last, with a surge this spring and again with just two weeks before graduation.

Write to Jane Porter at jane.porter@wsj.com

By JIM FUSILLI

San Francisco

‘Navigated Like the Swan” (Western Vinyl), the new album by Young Moon, is a dark work about lost love and dissociation. It engulfs the listener—and sometimes even the narrator—with its waves of synthesizers and strummed guitars. Young Moon, aka Trevor Montgomery, says the disc stems from a somber worldview exacerbated by a sudden, unexpected end to a long romance.

Paul Clipson

Young Moon is baffled by how his new album has been received as a work of sadness.

“The girl I wrote this record about, we were engaged and suddenly she kicked me out of the house,” he said over coffee at his favorite haunt, a short bike ride from his Mission District apartment here. “‘You’re quitting on me,’ I said. I told her that what’s important to me is working together.” He shrugged to indicate his logic had no place in their farewell conversation.

On the new album, Mr. Montgomery, 40, played everything including rudimentary percussion. He overdubbed his voice to form a choir and doubled some lead vocals an octave apart. Mostly down-tempo and always sincere, the album will interest fans of early Velvet Underground or of Mark Kozelek’s projects the Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon. Since the disc came out last month, some writers have compared Young Moon to Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen, but they’re wrong: On “Navigated Like the Swan,” Mr. Montgomery is sorting through thoughts and emotions to make sense of his personal chaos. With Messrs. Cave and Cohen, there’s the sense that they write about what they’ve already discovered.

“In the past, I’d get bogged down with conceptual lyrics,” Mr. Montgomery said. “This was kind of letting go of that lofty idealism.” Of Mr. Kozelek, he said: “I really related to people like him or Arthur Lee of Love. Their characters come out of nowhere and they create these super-weird lyrics.”

In the song “Cold Day Solstice,” we hear Mr. Montgomery try to buck up and move on: “Why are you waiting for the light on a bright day?” His composition “Emma Jane,” he said, is based on a true story: “She saved up her money and one day after school, she took a cab from Santa Rosa, walked out and jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Years later, her mom found a note. It reminded me of so many people I knew. I’ve had my own bouts of suicidal thoughts. It’s always focused around the bridge.”

Tall, fit and blue-eyed, Mr. Montgomery is an affable presence whose demeanor conceals his weighty introspection. He grew up in Anaheim, Calif., his father a successful entrepreneur who owned a string of athletic-apparel stores. “I had a great childhood,” he said. “There were tons of kids in the neighborhood.” But during the recession of the 1980s, his father lost his business. Happiness and security vanished; the family moved to San Bernardino. “I lost all my friends. We moved into a condominium where there were no kids. MTV and radio became my escape. I didn’t quite understand what was going on.”

He developed a taste for drugs. “Most of my high-school years,” he said, “I was in rehab.” In his late teens, he began to write songs, and though he considered a career in the fine arts—”I quickly realized I wasn’t going to be a painter”—he remained enthralled by the New Wave bands of his youth, including Depeche Mode, Psychedelic Furs and Simple Minds. Here in San Francisco, he formed a band and found an encouraging community of musicians.

“They all seemed impressed,” he said. “I didn’t think I was talented, but I guess I had my own perspective.” He knocked around in several bands, but never found any career-making acclaim. Still, he persevered, laying tile during the day for income, as he still does, but keeping up with his music.

Mr. Montgomery recently enjoyed giving a solo performance at the Hemlock Tavern in the Tenderloin here, where he sang and played songs from “Navigated Like the Swan”—some along with recordings of the backing tracks, others with just his voice and guitar. He’s hoping to get on the road, at least to major U.S. cities, to perform additional shows.

He seems baffled by how his album has been received. “It seems people interpret this as a sad record,” he said. “I feel the opposite about it—it’s about happiness. Making it made me feel young and way more uninhibited. As long as I’m doing my art, it’s going to go through my own filters.”

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @wsjrock.

By JANE HODGES

Telecommuters, entrepreneurs, and the self-employed all grapple with the logistical challenges of working alone. At home, workers face isolation and domestic distraction. At the corner coffee shop offering free Wi-Fi, there’s insufficient privacy, too few electrical outlets and the nuisance of latte orders shouted out through the day.

A growing number of workers face these hassles every day. As of November 2009, there were nine million self-employed workers in the U.S., according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Meanwhile, the volume of workers telecommuting at least once a month for employers grew 17% between 2006 and 2008, to 33.7 million workers, according to WorldatWork, a human-resources research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Telecommuting has grown more widespread among full-time workers due to technology advances and corporate efforts to drive down overhead by lowering real-estate costs, says Cindy Auten, general manager of Telework Exchange, a telecommuting research organization in Alexandria, Va. “Organizations are starting to see the benefits of telecommuting for the bottom line,” Ms. Auten says. “The ability to work offsite is even a recruitment tool.”

For those who lack a conventional office, shared, or “coworking,” spaces promise to solve some of the dilemmas of working alone. These facilities provide environments where professional nomads can work in relative quiet and even socialize around the coffee pot, or copier.

Just how well could we “cowork”? To find out, we took laptop and cellphone to four facilities in four cities, Office Nomads in Seattle; Souk in Portland, Ore.; The Coop in Chicago; and New Work City in Manhattan. All four are located in popular neighborhoods near public transit.

The facilities offered a variety of pricing plans ranging from day rates for the noncommittal to full-time 24-hour access memberships. Aside from solo workstations, they all also offered free high-speed Internet connections, free coffee, whiteboards and areas (with beanbag chairs) for small group brainstorming sessions, restrooms, lockers or storage, and light office amenities such as copiers.

Reservations weren’t required at any of the spaces, but were available at Souk and are forthcoming at New Work City.

All the facilities belonged to the “Coworking Visa” program, which lets members in participating coworking spaces use partner spaces elsewhere when traveling.

All also offered first-come/first-serve use of conference rooms for quick private chats or calls. At Souk, you could pay to reserve conference rooms for formal meetings or longer uses.

The Coop, located in Chicago’s West Loop area, was the smallest space we tested, with desk-top spaces pushed up against one another without dividers.

We visited twice during the week—on a Wednesday and Thursday—and appreciated that a few workers—an accountant and a consultant—greeted us. Working in a formal office motivated us more to work and we appreciated the comfy black leather chairs and good lighting. But the lack of barriers between desks meant we could see coworkers’ computer screens, and vice versa.

We were unsure of phone etiquette, but learned it was acceptable to make calls in the open when coworkers conducted job interviews and client meetings over the phone. While slightly distracting, the open-air calls were no worse than in a conventional office.

Manhattan’s New Work City, on the edge of SoHo, was on the compact side. The space had a 20-worker capacity and didn’t take reservations when we called, but the owner said a reservation systems is in the works. After check-in, we snagged one of the few remaining spots. We appreciated that our work space was spacious and that coworkers seemed industrious. Some of the office denizens appeared familiar with one another and a bulletin board posted community news, but we didn’t feel pressured to socialize.

Both coworking spaces we tried in the techie Northwest were bigger. Seattle’s Office Nomads, located in youthful and artistic Capitol Hill, can accommodate several dozen workers with its mix of closed-door offices, open desks and lounge areas. Office Nomads didn’t require a reservation and won’t charge for the first visit. Office Nomads was well-lit, with abundant plugs and desk options.

Coworkers—as well as the site’s founders—introduced themselves and offered help. We weren’t sure if we visited on a particularly friendly day or if this was the norm. Office Nomads appeared to place an emphasis on creating a community for its members; there was a “State of the Nomads” monthly meeting at midday. A bulletin board listed in-house social options as well as visiting speakers slated to appear, and also featured quirky photos and fun facts about members. Office Nomads also offered the most extensive weekday hours, from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

We made a reservation to use Souk, on the edge of Portland’s Pearl District and Chinatown, for a Thursday. We were surprised at how quiet the space was, with less than 15 workers inhabiting a space sufficient for several dozen more. The friendly office manager checked us in, gave us a tour, and even made us an Americano coffee from the office cappuccino maker.

Souk offered the widest variety of work-space configurations. Full-time members could use enclosed offices, but less-frequent coworkers could choose from rolling desks in a large open room, a communal work table, or first-come/first-serve semi-private rooms with walls and sliding doors. We liked that rolling desks in the open room could be moved at coworkers’ discretion—toward a wall for privacy, near a partner for collaboration. The open room also offered lightweight partitions for makeshift privacy. We chose a semi-private room. Noise was minimal, but we overheard some consultants and nonprofit sector types talking about work projects. Abstract art adorned the brick walls and furnishings included Herman Miller chairs and modern desks.

All in all, we liked coworking spaces. There were a few hitches, however. We needed to spend considerable time on the phone and felt uncomfortable discussing confidential matters publicly or hogging conference rooms. The other complication is that while coworking spaces guarantee and deliver a baseline of services, they also offer lots of extras based on loose rules. For instance, sometimes the facilities stay open later than posted hours and sometimes they don’t, or conference rooms aren’t always available.

For those of us with tight deadlines or plan-ahead mentalities, this can be stressful. But considering how cheap and flexible coworking is relative to a full-time lease—and the social perks—we don’t have problems with this unpredictability.

—Lori Barrett in Chicago and Shivani Vora in New York contributed to this article.

By KAREN WILKIN

Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

‘The Stoning of Saint Stephen’ by Lorenzo Lotto.

New York

Bergamo, Italy, is enchanting. Home of the commedia dell’arte and birthplace of Gaetano Donizetti, it’s notable today for its blissfully car-free cittá alta, a perfect miniature medieval and Renaissance hilltown, above the Lombard plain, complete with castle, 16th-century walls built by the Venetians, and a superb piazza. There’s also a quattrocento jewel box of a funerary chapel built by Bartolomeo Colleoni, the mercenary soldier and later Captain General of the Venetian Republic, for himself and his family—a supplement to the iconic commemorative equestrian statue by Andrea Verrocchio in Venice.

Lower Bergamo is larger and more modern. The draw here, in addition to a handsome 16th- to 18th-century old quarter, is the Accademia Carrrara, founded in the 18th century by a passionate, civic-minded collector and enriched in the 19th century by two others, one of them the connoisseur Giovanni Morelli, whose “scientific” method of scrutinizing works of art taught generations of art historians, including Bernard Berenson, how to identify the “hands” of particular artists. The museum’s outstanding collection of Renaissance art from Venice, Lombardy and Florence reflects the exacting eyes, the sense of purpose and the taste of the founders, who were acutely aware of Bergamo’s unique heritage as an outpost of the Venetian Republic close to Milan. An appetite for North Italian realism was part of the local tradition, but so was enthusiasm for the opulence of Venice.

Now, Bergamo has come to Manhattan. The Accademia Carrara is closed for restoration, so 15 of its masterworks by Venetian and North Italian artists, painted roughly between 1450 and 1550—Bergamo’s “Golden Age”—are on view now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in “Bellini, Titian, and Lotto: North Italian Paintings From the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo.” It’s a spectacular little show.

Every work is noteworthy, whether by an acclaimed master or a less familiar but equally accomplished artist. The celebrated Venetian Giovanni Bellini’s early, half-length “Pietá With the Virgin and Saint John” (c. 1455-60) transforms the iconography of a Byzantine icon into an intensely felt, wiry, meticulously rendered study of grief and reminds us of the artist’s close connection, in the first part of his career, with his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. Equally compelling is “The Three Crosses” (1450 or 1456) by Vincenzo Foppa, who came from nearby Brescia but worked mostly in Milan; this astonishing picture makes us beholders, on an up-to-the-minute classical loggia, contemplating a spatially articulate crucified Christ between the two thieves, bathed in eerie light, against a strangely schematic landscape.

The selection’s Titian, “Orpheus and Eurydice” (c. 1508-12), while not universally accepted as by his hand, is plausibly presented here as a very early work, when the youthful artist was under the influence of Giorgione. In the foreground of a fantastic landscape, Eurydice is bitten by what appears to be a miniature dragon. Further back, Orpheus starts turning to gaze, fatally, at his beloved as he leads her out of Hades—here dark, satanic mills, probably inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s nocturnal fire scenes, recently installed in Venice—while Eurydice begins to slip back into the underworld. This fraught moment is presented inventively, although the picture is so embrowned by time (or obscured by darkened varnish) that it’s difficult to form a real opinion.

Artists from Bergamo and its region often learned their craft in La Serenissima and the influence of Venetian art is palpable in their work. Bellini’s prototypes inform a “Madonna and Child” (c. 1520) by Andrea Previtali that was commissioned by Paolo Cassotti, the richest merchant in the city. In a dramatic reversal of protocol, Cassotti and his wife, Agnese, are presented head-on, standing closer to the Virgin and Child than their patron saints, who face away from us. In 1520, as today, access could be bought. Titian’s approach to portraiture haunts a pair of marvelous paintings by Giovanni Battista Moroni (whom Titian is said to have admired). A shrewd young man, painted in 1567, stares appraisingly; a self-possessed, opulently dressed, bejeweled little girl, painted about 1570, fixes us with wide gray eyes.

Lorenzo Lotto is the star of the show, even in this splendid company—a deserved distinction, since the Venetian-trained painter worked in Bergamo for more than a decade. The exhibition’s three large predella panels (narrative images placed below an altarpiece) by Lotto, painted in 1513-1516, were enormously influential on local artists, as was the monumental devotional painting to which they originally belonged, made for Bergamo’s church of San Bartolomeo.

It’s easy to see why. The dramatic moments depicted in the predelle—one of St. Dominic’s miracles, the Entombment, and the stoning of St. Stephen—are staged with clarity, elegance and maximum emotional intensity. The firmly modeled, variously costumed protagonists of the narratives move easily in space. Each embodies a particular inner state, from the worried relative of the mortally wounded man whom St. Dominic revives; to the swooning Madonna, recoiling from the body of her dead son; to the anguished, calm St. Stephen, praying in the face of martyrdom. And that’s not to mention the classical harmony of Stephen’s nude limbs escaping his concealing cloak. The martyred saint’s attackers—bending, stretching and turning balletically as they hurl their massive stones—diagram the space of the picture so powerfully that it almost counteracts the gruesome subject. All this: lush Venetian color; poetic landscape and architectural backgrounds; and Lotto’s own unmistakable quirkiness, which he apparently cultivated to separate himself from his Venetian colleagues. It’s the next best thing to a trip to Bergamo.

Ms. Wilkin writes about art for the Journal.

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN And ROBIN SIDEL

As companies seek to cut costs and accommodate an increasingly mobile work force, some employees have had to say goodbye to their personal work areas. Robin Sidel explains why on Lunch Break. Photo: Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal.

Office workers, grab your bobblehead dolls: The boss may be coming for your desk.

As companies seek to cut costs and accommodate an increasingly mobile work force, some employees have had to say goodbye to their personal work areas.

Unassigned workspaces, sometimes called “free address” or “nonterritorial offices,” have long been a fact of life for consultants or employees who do their jobs mostly on the road or from home.

But a growing number of workers, including some who spend more time at the office, have had their cubicles replaced by communal tables or unassigned desks they share with a sometimes shifting cast of colleagues.

Companies including financial-services giant American Express Co.,

drug maker GlaxoSmithKline

PLC and accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers are shifting large groups of workers into shared spaces.

Instead of assigned desks, employees often get storage lockers to hold their files and supplies. Spots can be reserved in advance—a practice called “hotelling”—or snagged on a first-come, first-served basis, depending on company policy.

Most companies that have embraced unassigned workspaces have done so to cut real estate and other costs, in some cases by placing workers closer together. Shrinking an office’s footprint can save millions of dollars annually in rent and energy expenses.

But the new configurations also have brought some unexpected benefits—from encouraging workers to collaborate to reducing internal email.

At American Express, roughly 20% of the 5,000 workers at the company’s New York headquarters are considered “club” employees, who come to the office just a few days a week and set up in unassigned desks. These employees are part of a companywide program called BlueWork, which is intended to spur creativity and save money by doing away with traditional office space.

The company is reconfiguring floors of its 51-story building, at a rate of three to four floors a year, to shift more workers to unassigned workspace, and has begun a similar transition at its London and Singapore offices.

Susan Chapman, a senior vice president at American Express who is overseeing the redesign, says that studies show traditional office space has a utilization rate of just 50% due to sick days, vacations and travel. That doesn’t count wasted drawer space that holds stacks of old paperwork, cookware, shoes and other personal items.

“Those are just not things we want to pay for. We want to efficiently use that space,” Ms. Chapman says.

American Express made some adjustments based on feedback—for example, it provided rolling stools near its storage lockers after women employees griped that they had no place to sit down when changing out of their commuting shoes.

Kimberly D. Elsbach, a management professor at the University of California, Davis, who has researched the effects of nonterritorial offices on workers, found that most workers adapted to their new work environment, but some of those who didn’t felt they had lost some of their identity in the office because they weren’t able to personalize their space.

Other workers, she says, felt less organized. “They said ‘every day I had to unpack everything and recreate some semblance of my space before I get started.’ ”

Still, the system appears to be gaining traction. In a survey of 950 companies, the International Facility Management Association, a trade group for office-facility managers, found 60% had some unassigned workspaces in their offices, and about half said the number of employees using the unassigned space had increased in the past two years.

GlaxoSmithKline says it has saved nearly $10 million annually in real-estate costs by gradually shifting 1,200 employees at its Research Triangle Park, N.C., office to unassigned seating. Similar moves outside the U.S. have saved the U.K.-based company some £25 million ($40 million) annually, says Christian Bigsby, Glaxo’s senior vice president of world-wide real estate and facilities.

Employees work in “neighborhoods” defined by job function, such as marketing or finance, so workers sit near those they interact with regularly in the course of a workday.

Glaxo thought through a number of logistical hurdles. Its desks and chairs, for instance, can be adjusted for workers of varying heights, as part of an ergonomic setup it says was designed to take just 45 seconds.

Robert Nash, Glaxo’s director of U.S. environment health and safety, previously worked in an enclosed office, decorated with photos and a map of the North Carolina coastline.

Since the changeover, he comes into work with his laptop, equipped with an Internet phone, picks a spot at a worktable—he likes to be near the window—and stows his backpack under the desk. Since he keeps his documents online, his paper files now occupy a single file drawer.

“It’s an instant office. Everything I need is just in my backpack or laptop,” says the 49-year-old Mr. Nash.

Mr. Nash says he is spending less time emailing with colleagues and more time instead in brief, casual meetings, which lead to quicker decisions.

In surveys of employees who switched from assigned cubicles and offices, Glaxo found email traffic dropped by more than 50%, while decision making accelerated by some 25% because workers were able to meet informally instead of volleying emails from offices and cubes.

Glaxo has shifted employees in 20 offices globally to unassigned seating; the company says it plans to do so wherever it redesigns office space. In Philadelphia, for example, Glaxo’s 1,300 Center City employees will move to an entirely unassigned office by next spring.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has long had a desk-reservation policy, allowing employees who visit other offices to use vacant cubicles and desks.

Now 2,000 employees in its offices in Denver, San Diego and San Jose, Calif., are using a new arrangement in which workers who come into the office regularly still have their own offices and desks. But when they are out of the office for work or on vacation, other employees can reserve their spaces, either through an online system or at a computer terminal in the office.

Before making the switch, PricewaterhouseCoopers encouraged its employees to follow some basic rules of etiquette, reminding them, for instance, not to leave uneaten food in someone else’s office and urging them to replace office supplies they used.

Anne Donovan, a human-resources executive at PricewaterhouseCoopers, says she has learned a lot about her colleagues by sitting at their desks, surrounded by personal items. “I like looking at everyone else’s kids,” she says. “I think it makes us all feel closer to each other.”

Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com and Robin Sidel at robin.sidel@wsj.com