AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Staffers At V&A Museums In London Suspend Strike Plans
“The strike was suspended on Monday pending last-minute talks with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, after the V&A management made an improved offer.” – The Guardian
- Walter Koenig, Who Played Chekov On The Original “Star Trek,” Has Died At 90
“The son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Mr. Koenig was a journeyman on stage and TV who developed a specialty in ethnic parts. He was a Swedish businessman in the sitcom Gidget and a French resistance fighter on the drama series Jericho … before he joined Star Trek in 1967.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
- When the People Who Deliver the Mission Start to Feel Like the Mission
This one is hard to write.
Over dinner a while back, a colleague I affectionately call my “sister from another mother” and I kept circling a pattern that is difficult to name without sounding ungenerous. We kept starting sentences and abandoning them, because every version seemed to insult people we both admire. But the pattern is real, it is showing up in some of the best orchestras and opera companies in the country right now, and I think it explains why so many of this fall’s labor fights have been so bitter. So let me try to do this carefully.
In some cultural organizations, the people closest to the mission start to be treated as the people the mission is for. Once that happens, almost any structural change becomes impossible to discuss, and right now our sector cannot afford to avoid structural change.
I am not saying artists are selfish or entitled. The players, actors and singers I have in mind are usually the opposite: trained for decades, paid less than their skill would earn almost anywhere else, and more devoted to the work than anyone else on the payroll (including, very often, the CFO). No arts organization ever votes to redefine its mission around its own roster. It just stops asking who the art is for, and over time that question gets answered by default.
Centrality and Ownership
Program centrality and program ownership are different things. In the symphony world, for example, musicians are the people through whom an orchestra’s mission is delivered, and that deserves to be honored in the budget, the schedule and the boardroom. The trouble starts when an institution begins acting as though the mission exists for its musicians rather than through its musicians for someone else.
In most of the nonprofit world this confusion never takes root because the beneficiary is obvious. A caseworker at a family shelter knows exactly whom the work is for. There may be fierce internal arguments about strategy or staffing, but nobody confuses the staff with the families.
Cultural organizations are more complicated, and let’s be real about why this is the case. Without musicians there is no concert. The people delivering the program are central to the institution’s identity in a way that is not true of a food bank or a shelter.
But consider this asymmetry within the same tax-exempt status. A food bank that loses its staff is still a food bank, and the people who depend on it will still be hungry tomorrow. An orchestra without its musicians is an empty hall, and the audience will find something else to do with its Saturday night. Which brings me to the audience.
Audiences Can Walk Away
The National Endowment for the Arts’ most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that the share of American adults attending at least one arts event fell from 53.8 percent in 2017 to 47.9 percent in 2022. Classical music attendance fell from 8.6 percent of adults to 4.6 percent over the same five years, close to half. (Attendance at other live performances, which the NEA counts in a catch-all category, rose from 15.0 to 21.2 percent over the same period, so Americans kept going out, less often to hear us.) Theater tells a similar story: TCG’s most recent Theatre Facts found nonprofit ticket income in 2023 still 29 percent below 2019 after inflation, with attendance down 22 percent over TCG’s four-year trend period.
A food bank’s beneficiaries cannot walk away from their need. An orchestra’s beneficiaries can walk away from the orchestra, and the data says many of them already have. Cultural institutions therefore have less room for mission confusion than a social service agency does, because their beneficiaries are, in effect, volunteers.
Musicians are the engine of the institution, and any leader who treats them as a cost line deserves the resistance they get. An orchestra’s mission exists for its audience, and beyond the audience, for a public that will outlive all of us.
A Fall of Strikes
The San Francisco Opera orchestra struck in September, cancelling five performances including opening night. Management described a $15 million annual shortfall on an $87 million budget and a $30 million draw on the endowment, roughly 10 percent of the fund. Musicians said management’s opening proposal cut their pay by 26 percent, and tax filings reported by the San Francisco Standard show the general director’s compensation had risen 72 percent. Cleveland Orchestra musicians struck for three days after warning that unfilled vacancies put the orchestra’s standing at risk, Boston Symphony musicians voted to authorize what would have been the first strike in the orchestra’s 145-year history after the board declined to renew the music director, and Minnesota Opera’s orchestra authorized a strike ahead of its season opener. San Francisco Symphony is barely a year past a settlement that followed its music director’s departure over the board’s cuts to tours, commissions and education concerts.
San Francisco Opera’s numbers show why both sides dug in. A $15 million gap on an $87 million budget is 17 percent of the entire operation. A 10 percent endowment draw is roughly double the rate most institutions treat as sustainable, which means every year at that pace shrinks the fund that is supposed to cover the next gap.
Some of the musicians’ complaints in these disputes were fair, and some of management’s process was clumsy (a 72 percent raise for the general director did management no favors at the bargaining table). But I read a great deal of coverage this fall about artistic excellence, talent vacancies, base compensation and tenure process, and very little about the question that ought to decide these fights: what does this city’s audience need from its orchestra right now and more importantly over the next twenty years, and what has to change for the institution to keep providing it?
Leadership Owns Half of This
I’ll start with myself. As a CFO, I have been the executive who walked into a room talking about money before meaning.
Executives and boards create this dynamic by talking about margins before mission and by treating artists as an obstacle rather than as partners. When the only language leadership speaks fluently is financial, musicians learn to hear every proposal as a threat to their livelihood, because in their experience it usually is. Mission confusion takes two to tango: leaders who have stopped articulating who the institution serves, and artists who have stopped hearing themselves described as anything but a cost.
The closer people are to the sacred center of an institution, the easier it is for them to experience structural change as betrayal. That is an occupational hazard of caring deeply, and it would be strange if a principal cellist with thirty years in the section did not take a restructuring personally. But much of what our field calls defending the mission turns out to be defending the org chart, and the two deserve separate arguments.
The Faculty Parallel
The arts have company here. Tenured faculty are the people through whom a college delivers its mission, and their academic freedom deserves fierce protection, but when every proposal to change the academic program is heard as an attack on the institution’s soul, the college stops asking what students need, and students, like audiences, can walk away.
Listening Outward
Researchers who study mission drift, including a study of two social enterprises in the Journal of Business Ethics, have documented how organizations can drift away from the people they were built to serve. The best evidence I know of for the alternative comes from Listen4Good, which helped more than 1,250 nonprofits and government agencies systematically collect feedback from the people they serve; in an evaluation of its first four years, 81 percent of participants made at least one change as a result. That falls well short of proof that listening to audiences saves orchestras (“made a change” is a low bar), but it is evidence that organizations which listen outward do change.
A Test for the Next Negotiation
So here is a test I would put on the table at the start of every restructuring, contract negotiation or season redesign, and I would ask musicians, managers and trustees to answer it together. Who is this decision for? What does the audience lose if we change, and what does it lose if we don’t? Does this protect the music, or the current structure of the people making it? Will this institution still be able to serve this city in 2040? If every side answers the first question with the audience, the rest of the argument gets far more productive, even when it stays painful.
The healthiest arts organizations treat their artists as stewards of the mission rather than its owners. Their expertise should shape strategy, their pay should be protected as fiercely as the budget allows, and their voice belongs in artistic planning, which the Boston musicians just won. But the final test of any decision is whether it strengthens the institution’s ability to serve the audiences and the public for whom it exists, and for whom it receives its tax exemption.
- American History, the American Arts, and the Uses of Historical Fiction
- Vice President for Advancement, Aspen Music Festival and School
Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) welcomes applications and nominations for the position of Vice President for Advancement.
About Aspen Music Festival and School
http://www.aspenmusicfestival.com
The Aspen Music Festival and School is widely recognized to be among the finest classical music centers for performance and education both nationally and internationally. Presenting more than 300 musical events during its eight-week summer season, AMFS draws leading classical musicians from across the world for a rich combination of performances of orchestral works, opera, chamber music, recitals, contemporary music, works by new or previously unrecognized voices, popular genres, family events, and talks, competitions, and classes.
Over seven decades, AMFS’s magic has been in the combination of seasoned professionals and youth as colleagues and co-inspiring forces. AMFS Alumni fill every corner of the music world today, performing in orchestras, as soloists, singing, composing, conducting and teaching. AMFS continues to create, educate, and inspire.
In 2026, more than 450 students participated in orchestra, opera, chamber music, piano studies, classical guitar, composition, and conducting studies. Students came to Aspen from 40 U.S. states and 40 countries to play in three orchestras, sing, conduct, compose and study with artist-faculty members from the leading professional ensembles, conservatories, and schools of music in North America and across the world. In 2027, in addition to recitals and concerts by an array of major artists, highlights will include a concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold and opera presentations of Kevin Puts’ The Hours and Bizet’s Carmen.
A deep commitment to Aspen itself and the surrounding communities is reflected in the many events in and around the Klein Music Tent that are free to the public during the summer season. From Fall to Spring, AMFS engages young audiences with popular in-school and after-school music programs throughout the Roaring Fork Valley. AMFS is a leader among Aspen’s extraordinary group of cultural and humanistic non-profit organizations such as the Aspen Institute, the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the Wheeler Opera House, and Theatre Aspen.
AMFS is governed by a Board of 51 dedicated and engaged Trustees. Alexandra Munroe is Board Chair. Meghan Martineau Umber began her tenure as President and CEO on October 1, 2026. The year-round staff of 38 expands to 105 in the summer. The summer faculty includes 130 distinguished artists from around the world. Robert Spano is Music Director, and Renée Fleming and Patrick Summers are Co-Artistic Directors of the Opera Theater and Vocal Arts program.
AMFS’s FY 27 operating budget is $23.5 million. At the successful conclusion of the current campaign, the $120 million endowment will have grown to $175 million.
The Opportunity
The next Vice President for Advancement will join AMFS as Meghan Umber becomes the Festival and School’s seventh President and CEO. The VP will be a key member of AMFS’s new executive leadership team as they build on AMFS’s remarkable legacy as a thought leader in the arts and on the considerable accomplishments of Alan Fletcher who recently concluded his twenty-one-year tenure in the role.
The next VP will have the opportunity to bring a major fundraising campaign, Aspen Promises, to a successful conclusion. The VP will participate actively in envisioning and planning the next decade of growth and development for AMFS and in designing new opportunities for increased philanthropic support. The VP will have the opportunity to inspire both new and existing donors to discover the value, importance, and sheer joy of investing in the future of music through the Aspen Music Festival and School.
The Position
Reporting to the President and CEO, the Vice President for Advancement creates, articulates, and executes strategic fundraising plans to support the Festival and School’s artistic mission, vision, and growth as AMFS builds upon its operational base of philanthropic support.
The VP for Advancement ensures that AMFS achieves and exceeds its annual fundraising goal, currently at $10 million, for contributed income from individuals, corporations, foundations, and government agencies. Working with the President and CEO, the next VP for Advancement will drive the successful completion of the Aspen Promises campaign, currently at $85 million, to reach and surpass its $92 million goal in support of the current strategic plan.
The VP for Advancement partners with the President and CEO to recruit, engage, and support an active Board of Trustees who are significant individual donors as well as ambassadors and advocates for AMFS throughout the country and the world. The VP provides impetus and support to the fundraising work of the CEO and the Board, and takes an active role in the cultivation, solicitation, and stewarding of individual and institutional donors. The VP ensures that AMFS’s planned giving program provides opportunities that address potential donors’ interests and concerns.
The Vice President for Advancement recruits, supervises, and motivates a high-performing development team of six full-time and three summer staff members. The VP ensures that the systems and protocols are in place to provide accurate recording, prompt acknowledgement, and appropriate stewardship of all gifts.
The VP is a member of the executive leadership team, which includes the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, VP for Marketing and Communications, VP for Artistic Administration, VP and General Manager, VP for Education and Community, and VP and Dean of Students.
The Vice President for Advancement is a visible, active, and articulate representative of AMFS in the Aspen community and throughout the country. While based in Aspen, the VP must be able to travel as needed to meet with current and potential donors.
Candidate Profile
The successful candidate will be an experienced fundraising professional who combines a love of music and music education with a deep respect for philanthropy and a track record of success in achieving and exceeding significant goals for annual fund, endowment, capital, and special projects fundraising. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated experience closing major seven-figure gifts. Experience working with a national and/or international board and donor base will be considered an asset.
The successful candidate will fully embrace and articulate AMFS’s institutional vision, mission, strategic initiatives, and overriding commitment to excellence. The VP will be able to speak and write persuasively about AMFS to a diverse community of stakeholders in Aspen, throughout the country, and throughout the world. The candidate will have a passion for connecting and building strong relationships with existing and potential donors.
The successful candidate will have demonstrated the ability to work effectively with a CEO and a volunteer Board of Directors to achieve fundraising goals. The candidate will be an effective supervisor who is willing and able to mentor staff in order to build a strong fundraising team and instill a sense of responsibility for fundraising throughout the organization.
The successful candidate will be creative, curious, and flexible. The VP will have the ability to manage multiple priorities and competing deadlines with grace and good humor. The successful candidate will be a person of high integrity and ethical standards who has a deep respect for philanthropy and a strong belief in the intrinsic value of music and music education.
The successful candidate will welcome the opportunity to become an active part of the greater Aspen community and to enjoy the incomparable natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains. While the VP will be expected to travel throughout the year, this is a full-time position based at the AMFS offices in Aspen and cannot be done remotely.
Compensation and Benefits
The salary range for this position is $240,000 to $260,000 based on qualifications and experience. AMFS offers a comprehensive benefits package that includes:
- Full employee medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage
- $25,000 life insurance policy
- Option to put aside money pre-tax for health and dependent care expenses
- Pre- or post-tax retirement plan with company match after two years of service
- Medical expense reimbursement plan to offset the insurance deductible
- Cash health and wellness benefit
- An employee assistance program
- Paid holiday schedule of 18 days
- Paid vacation of 13 days the first year that grows up to 26 days after five years
- Paid sick time of 15 days per year
- Season pass to the festival plus one guest
- Aspen Chamber discount on ski passes
Applications
Aspen Music Festival and School welcomes recommendations, nominations, and applications from all qualified candidates regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, disability, religion, ethnicity, or national origin.
We ask that applicants submit a letter that speaks to their specific interest in the AMFS VP position and their professional qualifications as described in the position specifications. Please include a resumé and contact information for at least three references. All applications will be treated as confidential, and references will not be contacted without the applicant’s prior agreement.
Electronic submissions in Adobe Acrobat PDF format are requested. Please send to:
Vice President for Advancement – Aspen Music Festival and School
c/o Catherine French Group
applications@catherinefrenchgroup.com
ISSUES
- Staffers At V&A Museums In London Suspend Strike Plans
“The strike was suspended on Monday pending last-minute talks with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, after the V&A management made an improved offer.” – The Guardian
- San Francisco’s SFMoMA Gets A Big Boost From A K-Pop Star
Want to sell tickets? Get a K-pop star’s art collection up. “The show has been a blockbuster success, with over 66,000 tickets sold and advance sales that were six times higher than any previous exhibition at the museum.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Dealers Scramble To Get Work Out Of Art Basel Paris After Surprise Early Closing
Multiple dealers told ARTnews they’d received an email announcing the decision at around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. By then, many had already suspected Saturday’s opening might be canceled. The loss of Sunday came as more of a surprise. – ARTnews
- Man Arrested For Beheading Iwo Jima Memorial Statue At Quantico Marine Base
“Officers responding to a report of destruction of property at the Marine Corps Base Quantico around 10:31 p.m. saw a man ‘actively damaging the statue with a sledgehammer’ and detained him without incident, Prince William County police said.” – CNN
- Art Basel Paris Is Closing Early Because Of France’s Violent Demonstrations
The art fair had been schedule to run through the weekend, but organizers have decided to shut it down on Friday evening “in light of potential demonstrations across Paris this weekend, and in the interest of safeguarding our visitors.” – Artnet
MEDIA
- The Film Director Whose Impossible Class Struggle Movie Won At Venice
Lee Chang-Dong: “I constantly asked myself: am I worthy of telling this story? And if I am, how do I tell it? Do I stand close to the workers, or keep my distance?” – The Guardian (UK)
- A Huge Fire Has Destroyed Hitler’s Nazi Guesthouse
For some reason (the reason being that after WWII, “local officials fought successfully to keep it, seeing it as a historical site that could attract visitors”), it was still standing, and had a popular restaurant. – The New York Times
- “Why Satire Is No Laughing Matter”: An Essay By Sacha Baron Cohen
“Satire doesn’t just needle politicians or regimes — it occasionally helps bring them down. … Historian Ben Lewis credits Soviet joke-telling with helping to topple communism, by making it impossible for even the system’s own enforcers to take it seriously. … ‘Every joke,’ George Orwell observed, ‘is a tiny revolution.’” – Time
- This Year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Booted From The National Mall, Thrived On A Nine-Month U.S. Tour
“Clifford Murphy, the director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, which runs the festival, called it a ‘democratizing experience’ — one that added up to more than just making lemons into lemonade.” – The New York Times
- Colombia’s National Museum Is The First Casualty In The New President’s Culture War
Last week, Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right politician sworn in as President in August, declared a “cultural counterrevolution” and had dozens of artworks and historical objects removed from the Museo Nacional in Bogotá. In response, some 62,000 people demonstrated in the capital, arguing that the President’s action violates Colombia’s 1991 Constitution. – Artnet
MUSIC
- Has Substack “Fixed” Writing On The Internet?
The company is, in essence, a crowdfunding e-commerce site, belonging to the same category as Kickstarter, Patreon, Gumroad, and OnlyFans. But it has out-evolved its ancestors and bested its competitors in its relevance to public discourse and in its direct commodification of online parasocial relationships. – The New Yorker
- Can An Immigrant From Scotland Really Be ‘An Irish Writer’?
The writer herself has questions.”Writers are, often, to generalise, outsiders, observers, given to the long view, odd if not downright awkward. … How do these propensities relate to the construction of literature as an international sport?” – Irish Times
- How To Write About People, And Place, Beyond War
“Turning to fiction allowed for stories that would otherwise have disappeared into the chest of time, to live on, and slowly but surely they are educating, bringing forth that we all share this place together. The 24-hour news cycle leaves little room for reflection or deeper understanding.” – LitHub
- What Makes For A Good Scary Story?
The end, says Stephen Graham Jones.”The story is running along the top of a flat mesa, and it’s nighttime and 95% of it is even-footing. But then at the very end, you jump off into the night, into the darkness, and you trust.” – NPR
- It’s Spooky Season, And Time To Acknowledge The Most Influential American Writer Ever
Edgar Allan Poe “seems in deliberate, even flagrant, contrast with what were once regarded as the great themes of American literature: the freedom of self-reinvention promised by a new society and its frontier, exploration, rugged individualism, and the struggle to conquer nature.” – Slate
PEOPLE
- Staffers At V&A Museums In London Suspend Strike Plans
“The strike was suspended on Monday pending last-minute talks with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, after the V&A management made an improved offer.” – The Guardian
- Walter Koenig, Who Played Chekov On The Original “Star Trek,” Has Died At 90
“The son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Mr. Koenig was a journeyman on stage and TV who developed a specialty in ethnic parts. He was a Swedish businessman in the sitcom Gidget and a French resistance fighter on the drama series Jericho … before he joined Star Trek in 1967.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
- When the People Who Deliver the Mission Start to Feel Like the Mission
This one is hard to write.
Over dinner a while back, a colleague I affectionately call my “sister from another mother” and I kept circling a pattern that is difficult to name without sounding ungenerous. We kept starting sentences and abandoning them, because every version seemed to insult people we both admire. But the pattern is real, it is showing up in some of the best orchestras and opera companies in the country right now, and I think it explains why so many of this fall’s labor fights have been so bitter. So let me try to do this carefully.
In some cultural organizations, the people closest to the mission start to be treated as the people the mission is for. Once that happens, almost any structural change becomes impossible to discuss, and right now our sector cannot afford to avoid structural change.
I am not saying artists are selfish or entitled. The players, actors and singers I have in mind are usually the opposite: trained for decades, paid less than their skill would earn almost anywhere else, and more devoted to the work than anyone else on the payroll (including, very often, the CFO). No arts organization ever votes to redefine its mission around its own roster. It just stops asking who the art is for, and over time that question gets answered by default.
Centrality and Ownership
Program centrality and program ownership are different things. In the symphony world, for example, musicians are the people through whom an orchestra’s mission is delivered, and that deserves to be honored in the budget, the schedule and the boardroom. The trouble starts when an institution begins acting as though the mission exists for its musicians rather than through its musicians for someone else.
In most of the nonprofit world this confusion never takes root because the beneficiary is obvious. A caseworker at a family shelter knows exactly whom the work is for. There may be fierce internal arguments about strategy or staffing, but nobody confuses the staff with the families.
Cultural organizations are more complicated, and let’s be real about why this is the case. Without musicians there is no concert. The people delivering the program are central to the institution’s identity in a way that is not true of a food bank or a shelter.
But consider this asymmetry within the same tax-exempt status. A food bank that loses its staff is still a food bank, and the people who depend on it will still be hungry tomorrow. An orchestra without its musicians is an empty hall, and the audience will find something else to do with its Saturday night. Which brings me to the audience.
Audiences Can Walk Away
The National Endowment for the Arts’ most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that the share of American adults attending at least one arts event fell from 53.8 percent in 2017 to 47.9 percent in 2022. Classical music attendance fell from 8.6 percent of adults to 4.6 percent over the same five years, close to half. (Attendance at other live performances, which the NEA counts in a catch-all category, rose from 15.0 to 21.2 percent over the same period, so Americans kept going out, less often to hear us.) Theater tells a similar story: TCG’s most recent Theatre Facts found nonprofit ticket income in 2023 still 29 percent below 2019 after inflation, with attendance down 22 percent over TCG’s four-year trend period.
A food bank’s beneficiaries cannot walk away from their need. An orchestra’s beneficiaries can walk away from the orchestra, and the data says many of them already have. Cultural institutions therefore have less room for mission confusion than a social service agency does, because their beneficiaries are, in effect, volunteers.
Musicians are the engine of the institution, and any leader who treats them as a cost line deserves the resistance they get. An orchestra’s mission exists for its audience, and beyond the audience, for a public that will outlive all of us.
A Fall of Strikes
The San Francisco Opera orchestra struck in September, cancelling five performances including opening night. Management described a $15 million annual shortfall on an $87 million budget and a $30 million draw on the endowment, roughly 10 percent of the fund. Musicians said management’s opening proposal cut their pay by 26 percent, and tax filings reported by the San Francisco Standard show the general director’s compensation had risen 72 percent. Cleveland Orchestra musicians struck for three days after warning that unfilled vacancies put the orchestra’s standing at risk, Boston Symphony musicians voted to authorize what would have been the first strike in the orchestra’s 145-year history after the board declined to renew the music director, and Minnesota Opera’s orchestra authorized a strike ahead of its season opener. San Francisco Symphony is barely a year past a settlement that followed its music director’s departure over the board’s cuts to tours, commissions and education concerts.
San Francisco Opera’s numbers show why both sides dug in. A $15 million gap on an $87 million budget is 17 percent of the entire operation. A 10 percent endowment draw is roughly double the rate most institutions treat as sustainable, which means every year at that pace shrinks the fund that is supposed to cover the next gap.
Some of the musicians’ complaints in these disputes were fair, and some of management’s process was clumsy (a 72 percent raise for the general director did management no favors at the bargaining table). But I read a great deal of coverage this fall about artistic excellence, talent vacancies, base compensation and tenure process, and very little about the question that ought to decide these fights: what does this city’s audience need from its orchestra right now and more importantly over the next twenty years, and what has to change for the institution to keep providing it?
Leadership Owns Half of This
I’ll start with myself. As a CFO, I have been the executive who walked into a room talking about money before meaning.
Executives and boards create this dynamic by talking about margins before mission and by treating artists as an obstacle rather than as partners. When the only language leadership speaks fluently is financial, musicians learn to hear every proposal as a threat to their livelihood, because in their experience it usually is. Mission confusion takes two to tango: leaders who have stopped articulating who the institution serves, and artists who have stopped hearing themselves described as anything but a cost.
The closer people are to the sacred center of an institution, the easier it is for them to experience structural change as betrayal. That is an occupational hazard of caring deeply, and it would be strange if a principal cellist with thirty years in the section did not take a restructuring personally. But much of what our field calls defending the mission turns out to be defending the org chart, and the two deserve separate arguments.
The Faculty Parallel
The arts have company here. Tenured faculty are the people through whom a college delivers its mission, and their academic freedom deserves fierce protection, but when every proposal to change the academic program is heard as an attack on the institution’s soul, the college stops asking what students need, and students, like audiences, can walk away.
Listening Outward
Researchers who study mission drift, including a study of two social enterprises in the Journal of Business Ethics, have documented how organizations can drift away from the people they were built to serve. The best evidence I know of for the alternative comes from Listen4Good, which helped more than 1,250 nonprofits and government agencies systematically collect feedback from the people they serve; in an evaluation of its first four years, 81 percent of participants made at least one change as a result. That falls well short of proof that listening to audiences saves orchestras (“made a change” is a low bar), but it is evidence that organizations which listen outward do change.
A Test for the Next Negotiation
So here is a test I would put on the table at the start of every restructuring, contract negotiation or season redesign, and I would ask musicians, managers and trustees to answer it together. Who is this decision for? What does the audience lose if we change, and what does it lose if we don’t? Does this protect the music, or the current structure of the people making it? Will this institution still be able to serve this city in 2040? If every side answers the first question with the audience, the rest of the argument gets far more productive, even when it stays painful.
The healthiest arts organizations treat their artists as stewards of the mission rather than its owners. Their expertise should shape strategy, their pay should be protected as fiercely as the budget allows, and their voice belongs in artistic planning, which the Boston musicians just won. But the final test of any decision is whether it strengthens the institution’s ability to serve the audiences and the public for whom it exists, and for whom it receives its tax exemption.
- American History, the American Arts, and the Uses of Historical Fiction
- Vice President for Advancement, Aspen Music Festival and School
Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) welcomes applications and nominations for the position of Vice President for Advancement.
About Aspen Music Festival and School
http://www.aspenmusicfestival.com
The Aspen Music Festival and School is widely recognized to be among the finest classical music centers for performance and education both nationally and internationally. Presenting more than 300 musical events during its eight-week summer season, AMFS draws leading classical musicians from across the world for a rich combination of performances of orchestral works, opera, chamber music, recitals, contemporary music, works by new or previously unrecognized voices, popular genres, family events, and talks, competitions, and classes.
Over seven decades, AMFS’s magic has been in the combination of seasoned professionals and youth as colleagues and co-inspiring forces. AMFS Alumni fill every corner of the music world today, performing in orchestras, as soloists, singing, composing, conducting and teaching. AMFS continues to create, educate, and inspire.
In 2026, more than 450 students participated in orchestra, opera, chamber music, piano studies, classical guitar, composition, and conducting studies. Students came to Aspen from 40 U.S. states and 40 countries to play in three orchestras, sing, conduct, compose and study with artist-faculty members from the leading professional ensembles, conservatories, and schools of music in North America and across the world. In 2027, in addition to recitals and concerts by an array of major artists, highlights will include a concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold and opera presentations of Kevin Puts’ The Hours and Bizet’s Carmen.
A deep commitment to Aspen itself and the surrounding communities is reflected in the many events in and around the Klein Music Tent that are free to the public during the summer season. From Fall to Spring, AMFS engages young audiences with popular in-school and after-school music programs throughout the Roaring Fork Valley. AMFS is a leader among Aspen’s extraordinary group of cultural and humanistic non-profit organizations such as the Aspen Institute, the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the Wheeler Opera House, and Theatre Aspen.
AMFS is governed by a Board of 51 dedicated and engaged Trustees. Alexandra Munroe is Board Chair. Meghan Martineau Umber began her tenure as President and CEO on October 1, 2026. The year-round staff of 38 expands to 105 in the summer. The summer faculty includes 130 distinguished artists from around the world. Robert Spano is Music Director, and Renée Fleming and Patrick Summers are Co-Artistic Directors of the Opera Theater and Vocal Arts program.
AMFS’s FY 27 operating budget is $23.5 million. At the successful conclusion of the current campaign, the $120 million endowment will have grown to $175 million.
The Opportunity
The next Vice President for Advancement will join AMFS as Meghan Umber becomes the Festival and School’s seventh President and CEO. The VP will be a key member of AMFS’s new executive leadership team as they build on AMFS’s remarkable legacy as a thought leader in the arts and on the considerable accomplishments of Alan Fletcher who recently concluded his twenty-one-year tenure in the role.
The next VP will have the opportunity to bring a major fundraising campaign, Aspen Promises, to a successful conclusion. The VP will participate actively in envisioning and planning the next decade of growth and development for AMFS and in designing new opportunities for increased philanthropic support. The VP will have the opportunity to inspire both new and existing donors to discover the value, importance, and sheer joy of investing in the future of music through the Aspen Music Festival and School.
The Position
Reporting to the President and CEO, the Vice President for Advancement creates, articulates, and executes strategic fundraising plans to support the Festival and School’s artistic mission, vision, and growth as AMFS builds upon its operational base of philanthropic support.
The VP for Advancement ensures that AMFS achieves and exceeds its annual fundraising goal, currently at $10 million, for contributed income from individuals, corporations, foundations, and government agencies. Working with the President and CEO, the next VP for Advancement will drive the successful completion of the Aspen Promises campaign, currently at $85 million, to reach and surpass its $92 million goal in support of the current strategic plan.
The VP for Advancement partners with the President and CEO to recruit, engage, and support an active Board of Trustees who are significant individual donors as well as ambassadors and advocates for AMFS throughout the country and the world. The VP provides impetus and support to the fundraising work of the CEO and the Board, and takes an active role in the cultivation, solicitation, and stewarding of individual and institutional donors. The VP ensures that AMFS’s planned giving program provides opportunities that address potential donors’ interests and concerns.
The Vice President for Advancement recruits, supervises, and motivates a high-performing development team of six full-time and three summer staff members. The VP ensures that the systems and protocols are in place to provide accurate recording, prompt acknowledgement, and appropriate stewardship of all gifts.
The VP is a member of the executive leadership team, which includes the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, VP for Marketing and Communications, VP for Artistic Administration, VP and General Manager, VP for Education and Community, and VP and Dean of Students.
The Vice President for Advancement is a visible, active, and articulate representative of AMFS in the Aspen community and throughout the country. While based in Aspen, the VP must be able to travel as needed to meet with current and potential donors.
Candidate Profile
The successful candidate will be an experienced fundraising professional who combines a love of music and music education with a deep respect for philanthropy and a track record of success in achieving and exceeding significant goals for annual fund, endowment, capital, and special projects fundraising. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated experience closing major seven-figure gifts. Experience working with a national and/or international board and donor base will be considered an asset.
The successful candidate will fully embrace and articulate AMFS’s institutional vision, mission, strategic initiatives, and overriding commitment to excellence. The VP will be able to speak and write persuasively about AMFS to a diverse community of stakeholders in Aspen, throughout the country, and throughout the world. The candidate will have a passion for connecting and building strong relationships with existing and potential donors.
The successful candidate will have demonstrated the ability to work effectively with a CEO and a volunteer Board of Directors to achieve fundraising goals. The candidate will be an effective supervisor who is willing and able to mentor staff in order to build a strong fundraising team and instill a sense of responsibility for fundraising throughout the organization.
The successful candidate will be creative, curious, and flexible. The VP will have the ability to manage multiple priorities and competing deadlines with grace and good humor. The successful candidate will be a person of high integrity and ethical standards who has a deep respect for philanthropy and a strong belief in the intrinsic value of music and music education.
The successful candidate will welcome the opportunity to become an active part of the greater Aspen community and to enjoy the incomparable natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains. While the VP will be expected to travel throughout the year, this is a full-time position based at the AMFS offices in Aspen and cannot be done remotely.
Compensation and Benefits
The salary range for this position is $240,000 to $260,000 based on qualifications and experience. AMFS offers a comprehensive benefits package that includes:
- Full employee medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage
- $25,000 life insurance policy
- Option to put aside money pre-tax for health and dependent care expenses
- Pre- or post-tax retirement plan with company match after two years of service
- Medical expense reimbursement plan to offset the insurance deductible
- Cash health and wellness benefit
- An employee assistance program
- Paid holiday schedule of 18 days
- Paid vacation of 13 days the first year that grows up to 26 days after five years
- Paid sick time of 15 days per year
- Season pass to the festival plus one guest
- Aspen Chamber discount on ski passes
Applications
Aspen Music Festival and School welcomes recommendations, nominations, and applications from all qualified candidates regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, disability, religion, ethnicity, or national origin.
We ask that applicants submit a letter that speaks to their specific interest in the AMFS VP position and their professional qualifications as described in the position specifications. Please include a resumé and contact information for at least three references. All applications will be treated as confidential, and references will not be contacted without the applicant’s prior agreement.
Electronic submissions in Adobe Acrobat PDF format are requested. Please send to:
Vice President for Advancement – Aspen Music Festival and School
c/o Catherine French Group
applications@catherinefrenchgroup.com
PEOPLE
- Staffers At V&A Museums In London Suspend Strike Plans
“The strike was suspended on Monday pending last-minute talks with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, after the V&A management made an improved offer.” – The Guardian
- Walter Koenig, Who Played Chekov On The Original “Star Trek,” Has Died At 90
“The son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Mr. Koenig was a journeyman on stage and TV who developed a specialty in ethnic parts. He was a Swedish businessman in the sitcom Gidget and a French resistance fighter on the drama series Jericho … before he joined Star Trek in 1967.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
- When the People Who Deliver the Mission Start to Feel Like the Mission
This one is hard to write.
Over dinner a while back, a colleague I affectionately call my “sister from another mother” and I kept circling a pattern that is difficult to name without sounding ungenerous. We kept starting sentences and abandoning them, because every version seemed to insult people we both admire. But the pattern is real, it is showing up in some of the best orchestras and opera companies in the country right now, and I think it explains why so many of this fall’s labor fights have been so bitter. So let me try to do this carefully.
In some cultural organizations, the people closest to the mission start to be treated as the people the mission is for. Once that happens, almost any structural change becomes impossible to discuss, and right now our sector cannot afford to avoid structural change.
I am not saying artists are selfish or entitled. The players, actors and singers I have in mind are usually the opposite: trained for decades, paid less than their skill would earn almost anywhere else, and more devoted to the work than anyone else on the payroll (including, very often, the CFO). No arts organization ever votes to redefine its mission around its own roster. It just stops asking who the art is for, and over time that question gets answered by default.
Centrality and Ownership
Program centrality and program ownership are different things. In the symphony world, for example, musicians are the people through whom an orchestra’s mission is delivered, and that deserves to be honored in the budget, the schedule and the boardroom. The trouble starts when an institution begins acting as though the mission exists for its musicians rather than through its musicians for someone else.
In most of the nonprofit world this confusion never takes root because the beneficiary is obvious. A caseworker at a family shelter knows exactly whom the work is for. There may be fierce internal arguments about strategy or staffing, but nobody confuses the staff with the families.
Cultural organizations are more complicated, and let’s be real about why this is the case. Without musicians there is no concert. The people delivering the program are central to the institution’s identity in a way that is not true of a food bank or a shelter.
But consider this asymmetry within the same tax-exempt status. A food bank that loses its staff is still a food bank, and the people who depend on it will still be hungry tomorrow. An orchestra without its musicians is an empty hall, and the audience will find something else to do with its Saturday night. Which brings me to the audience.
Audiences Can Walk Away
The National Endowment for the Arts’ most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that the share of American adults attending at least one arts event fell from 53.8 percent in 2017 to 47.9 percent in 2022. Classical music attendance fell from 8.6 percent of adults to 4.6 percent over the same five years, close to half. (Attendance at other live performances, which the NEA counts in a catch-all category, rose from 15.0 to 21.2 percent over the same period, so Americans kept going out, less often to hear us.) Theater tells a similar story: TCG’s most recent Theatre Facts found nonprofit ticket income in 2023 still 29 percent below 2019 after inflation, with attendance down 22 percent over TCG’s four-year trend period.
A food bank’s beneficiaries cannot walk away from their need. An orchestra’s beneficiaries can walk away from the orchestra, and the data says many of them already have. Cultural institutions therefore have less room for mission confusion than a social service agency does, because their beneficiaries are, in effect, volunteers.
Musicians are the engine of the institution, and any leader who treats them as a cost line deserves the resistance they get. An orchestra’s mission exists for its audience, and beyond the audience, for a public that will outlive all of us.
A Fall of Strikes
The San Francisco Opera orchestra struck in September, cancelling five performances including opening night. Management described a $15 million annual shortfall on an $87 million budget and a $30 million draw on the endowment, roughly 10 percent of the fund. Musicians said management’s opening proposal cut their pay by 26 percent, and tax filings reported by the San Francisco Standard show the general director’s compensation had risen 72 percent. Cleveland Orchestra musicians struck for three days after warning that unfilled vacancies put the orchestra’s standing at risk, Boston Symphony musicians voted to authorize what would have been the first strike in the orchestra’s 145-year history after the board declined to renew the music director, and Minnesota Opera’s orchestra authorized a strike ahead of its season opener. San Francisco Symphony is barely a year past a settlement that followed its music director’s departure over the board’s cuts to tours, commissions and education concerts.
San Francisco Opera’s numbers show why both sides dug in. A $15 million gap on an $87 million budget is 17 percent of the entire operation. A 10 percent endowment draw is roughly double the rate most institutions treat as sustainable, which means every year at that pace shrinks the fund that is supposed to cover the next gap.
Some of the musicians’ complaints in these disputes were fair, and some of management’s process was clumsy (a 72 percent raise for the general director did management no favors at the bargaining table). But I read a great deal of coverage this fall about artistic excellence, talent vacancies, base compensation and tenure process, and very little about the question that ought to decide these fights: what does this city’s audience need from its orchestra right now and more importantly over the next twenty years, and what has to change for the institution to keep providing it?
Leadership Owns Half of This
I’ll start with myself. As a CFO, I have been the executive who walked into a room talking about money before meaning.
Executives and boards create this dynamic by talking about margins before mission and by treating artists as an obstacle rather than as partners. When the only language leadership speaks fluently is financial, musicians learn to hear every proposal as a threat to their livelihood, because in their experience it usually is. Mission confusion takes two to tango: leaders who have stopped articulating who the institution serves, and artists who have stopped hearing themselves described as anything but a cost.
The closer people are to the sacred center of an institution, the easier it is for them to experience structural change as betrayal. That is an occupational hazard of caring deeply, and it would be strange if a principal cellist with thirty years in the section did not take a restructuring personally. But much of what our field calls defending the mission turns out to be defending the org chart, and the two deserve separate arguments.
The Faculty Parallel
The arts have company here. Tenured faculty are the people through whom a college delivers its mission, and their academic freedom deserves fierce protection, but when every proposal to change the academic program is heard as an attack on the institution’s soul, the college stops asking what students need, and students, like audiences, can walk away.
Listening Outward
Researchers who study mission drift, including a study of two social enterprises in the Journal of Business Ethics, have documented how organizations can drift away from the people they were built to serve. The best evidence I know of for the alternative comes from Listen4Good, which helped more than 1,250 nonprofits and government agencies systematically collect feedback from the people they serve; in an evaluation of its first four years, 81 percent of participants made at least one change as a result. That falls well short of proof that listening to audiences saves orchestras (“made a change” is a low bar), but it is evidence that organizations which listen outward do change.
A Test for the Next Negotiation
So here is a test I would put on the table at the start of every restructuring, contract negotiation or season redesign, and I would ask musicians, managers and trustees to answer it together. Who is this decision for? What does the audience lose if we change, and what does it lose if we don’t? Does this protect the music, or the current structure of the people making it? Will this institution still be able to serve this city in 2040? If every side answers the first question with the audience, the rest of the argument gets far more productive, even when it stays painful.
The healthiest arts organizations treat their artists as stewards of the mission rather than its owners. Their expertise should shape strategy, their pay should be protected as fiercely as the budget allows, and their voice belongs in artistic planning, which the Boston musicians just won. But the final test of any decision is whether it strengthens the institution’s ability to serve the audiences and the public for whom it exists, and for whom it receives its tax exemption.
- American History, the American Arts, and the Uses of Historical Fiction
- Vice President for Advancement, Aspen Music Festival and School
Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) welcomes applications and nominations for the position of Vice President for Advancement.
About Aspen Music Festival and School
http://www.aspenmusicfestival.com
The Aspen Music Festival and School is widely recognized to be among the finest classical music centers for performance and education both nationally and internationally. Presenting more than 300 musical events during its eight-week summer season, AMFS draws leading classical musicians from across the world for a rich combination of performances of orchestral works, opera, chamber music, recitals, contemporary music, works by new or previously unrecognized voices, popular genres, family events, and talks, competitions, and classes.
Over seven decades, AMFS’s magic has been in the combination of seasoned professionals and youth as colleagues and co-inspiring forces. AMFS Alumni fill every corner of the music world today, performing in orchestras, as soloists, singing, composing, conducting and teaching. AMFS continues to create, educate, and inspire.
In 2026, more than 450 students participated in orchestra, opera, chamber music, piano studies, classical guitar, composition, and conducting studies. Students came to Aspen from 40 U.S. states and 40 countries to play in three orchestras, sing, conduct, compose and study with artist-faculty members from the leading professional ensembles, conservatories, and schools of music in North America and across the world. In 2027, in addition to recitals and concerts by an array of major artists, highlights will include a concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold and opera presentations of Kevin Puts’ The Hours and Bizet’s Carmen.
A deep commitment to Aspen itself and the surrounding communities is reflected in the many events in and around the Klein Music Tent that are free to the public during the summer season. From Fall to Spring, AMFS engages young audiences with popular in-school and after-school music programs throughout the Roaring Fork Valley. AMFS is a leader among Aspen’s extraordinary group of cultural and humanistic non-profit organizations such as the Aspen Institute, the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the Wheeler Opera House, and Theatre Aspen.
AMFS is governed by a Board of 51 dedicated and engaged Trustees. Alexandra Munroe is Board Chair. Meghan Martineau Umber began her tenure as President and CEO on October 1, 2026. The year-round staff of 38 expands to 105 in the summer. The summer faculty includes 130 distinguished artists from around the world. Robert Spano is Music Director, and Renée Fleming and Patrick Summers are Co-Artistic Directors of the Opera Theater and Vocal Arts program.
AMFS’s FY 27 operating budget is $23.5 million. At the successful conclusion of the current campaign, the $120 million endowment will have grown to $175 million.
The Opportunity
The next Vice President for Advancement will join AMFS as Meghan Umber becomes the Festival and School’s seventh President and CEO. The VP will be a key member of AMFS’s new executive leadership team as they build on AMFS’s remarkable legacy as a thought leader in the arts and on the considerable accomplishments of Alan Fletcher who recently concluded his twenty-one-year tenure in the role.
The next VP will have the opportunity to bring a major fundraising campaign, Aspen Promises, to a successful conclusion. The VP will participate actively in envisioning and planning the next decade of growth and development for AMFS and in designing new opportunities for increased philanthropic support. The VP will have the opportunity to inspire both new and existing donors to discover the value, importance, and sheer joy of investing in the future of music through the Aspen Music Festival and School.
The Position
Reporting to the President and CEO, the Vice President for Advancement creates, articulates, and executes strategic fundraising plans to support the Festival and School’s artistic mission, vision, and growth as AMFS builds upon its operational base of philanthropic support.
The VP for Advancement ensures that AMFS achieves and exceeds its annual fundraising goal, currently at $10 million, for contributed income from individuals, corporations, foundations, and government agencies. Working with the President and CEO, the next VP for Advancement will drive the successful completion of the Aspen Promises campaign, currently at $85 million, to reach and surpass its $92 million goal in support of the current strategic plan.
The VP for Advancement partners with the President and CEO to recruit, engage, and support an active Board of Trustees who are significant individual donors as well as ambassadors and advocates for AMFS throughout the country and the world. The VP provides impetus and support to the fundraising work of the CEO and the Board, and takes an active role in the cultivation, solicitation, and stewarding of individual and institutional donors. The VP ensures that AMFS’s planned giving program provides opportunities that address potential donors’ interests and concerns.
The Vice President for Advancement recruits, supervises, and motivates a high-performing development team of six full-time and three summer staff members. The VP ensures that the systems and protocols are in place to provide accurate recording, prompt acknowledgement, and appropriate stewardship of all gifts.
The VP is a member of the executive leadership team, which includes the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, VP for Marketing and Communications, VP for Artistic Administration, VP and General Manager, VP for Education and Community, and VP and Dean of Students.
The Vice President for Advancement is a visible, active, and articulate representative of AMFS in the Aspen community and throughout the country. While based in Aspen, the VP must be able to travel as needed to meet with current and potential donors.
Candidate Profile
The successful candidate will be an experienced fundraising professional who combines a love of music and music education with a deep respect for philanthropy and a track record of success in achieving and exceeding significant goals for annual fund, endowment, capital, and special projects fundraising. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated experience closing major seven-figure gifts. Experience working with a national and/or international board and donor base will be considered an asset.
The successful candidate will fully embrace and articulate AMFS’s institutional vision, mission, strategic initiatives, and overriding commitment to excellence. The VP will be able to speak and write persuasively about AMFS to a diverse community of stakeholders in Aspen, throughout the country, and throughout the world. The candidate will have a passion for connecting and building strong relationships with existing and potential donors.
The successful candidate will have demonstrated the ability to work effectively with a CEO and a volunteer Board of Directors to achieve fundraising goals. The candidate will be an effective supervisor who is willing and able to mentor staff in order to build a strong fundraising team and instill a sense of responsibility for fundraising throughout the organization.
The successful candidate will be creative, curious, and flexible. The VP will have the ability to manage multiple priorities and competing deadlines with grace and good humor. The successful candidate will be a person of high integrity and ethical standards who has a deep respect for philanthropy and a strong belief in the intrinsic value of music and music education.
The successful candidate will welcome the opportunity to become an active part of the greater Aspen community and to enjoy the incomparable natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains. While the VP will be expected to travel throughout the year, this is a full-time position based at the AMFS offices in Aspen and cannot be done remotely.
Compensation and Benefits
The salary range for this position is $240,000 to $260,000 based on qualifications and experience. AMFS offers a comprehensive benefits package that includes:
- Full employee medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage
- $25,000 life insurance policy
- Option to put aside money pre-tax for health and dependent care expenses
- Pre- or post-tax retirement plan with company match after two years of service
- Medical expense reimbursement plan to offset the insurance deductible
- Cash health and wellness benefit
- An employee assistance program
- Paid holiday schedule of 18 days
- Paid vacation of 13 days the first year that grows up to 26 days after five years
- Paid sick time of 15 days per year
- Season pass to the festival plus one guest
- Aspen Chamber discount on ski passes
Applications
Aspen Music Festival and School welcomes recommendations, nominations, and applications from all qualified candidates regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, disability, religion, ethnicity, or national origin.
We ask that applicants submit a letter that speaks to their specific interest in the AMFS VP position and their professional qualifications as described in the position specifications. Please include a resumé and contact information for at least three references. All applications will be treated as confidential, and references will not be contacted without the applicant’s prior agreement.
Electronic submissions in Adobe Acrobat PDF format are requested. Please send to:
Vice President for Advancement – Aspen Music Festival and School
c/o Catherine French Group
applications@catherinefrenchgroup.com
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Billionaire Tech Nerds And Their Investment In Ending Democracy
As Trump’s behaviour became increasingly authoritarian—openly defying laws, targeting his enemies with prosecutions, dispatching troops into Democratic cities, and turning US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into a shock force to terrorize immigrant communities—many in Silicon Valley cashed in on the action. – The Walrus
- Does The California Gold Rush Teach Us Anything About The Rush To AI?
In 1849 alone, more than forty thousand people travelled overland to California, while roughly the same number headed there by sea. – The New Yorker
- Why Some Youth – The Ones Who Joust On Bikes, For Instance – Are Going Medieval
One “emerging medieval strand [is] ‘wenchcore,’ which offers ‘a more acceptable voracious sexuality, the ribald, singing, dancing, drinking, doesn’t-need-to-be-perfect idea of womanhood and of masculinity … more of just whatever goes.’” – The Guardian (UK)
- The Art Of Attention
“You can’t talk about aesthetics,” he wrote, “without talking about the principle of hope and the existence of evil.” Attention, for him, was a matter of life and death, or at least of their cultural equivalents, remembering and forgetting. – The New York Times
- Why Friction Is Necessary For Making Progress
The reality is that friction, despite seeming so antagonistic, is necessary and even productive. The force that resists motion has, since humans first struck a spark from a stone, been the very thing that propels us forward. – Aeon