Today’s Stories
The End Of The Art World (As We Know It)
Via this year’s deeply reimagined Sydney Biennale, now called NIRIN: “The impact of COVID-19 is both a significant challenge and a threshold for new beginnings. An international art world that has called persistently for radical socioeconomic change is now faced with just that in large measure, albeit in ways that it is not in a position to readily absorb.” – Hyperallergic
Listening To The Sirens’ Call
What a music critic who lives close to a major hospital hears in, and beyond, the now-constant sirens. “Most American ambulances contain an ‘electronic box in each vehicle, which comes preloaded with seven different sounds with names such as ‘Wail,’ ‘Yelp,’ and ‘Piercer.’'” – The New York Times
Beloved British Children’s Author Jacqueline Wilson Talks About Her Own Plot Twist
The author is on her 111th novel – she long ago stopped buying her signature chunky silver rings for each book – and this one might be her most personal. “Wilson is the fairy goth-mother of children’s fiction credited with daring to introduce such non-cheery subjects as depression and divorce into her children’s bedrooms.” – The Guardian (UK)
Michael McKinnell, Bold Architect Of Boston’s Democratic City Hall, Has Died At 84
McKinnell was a 26-year-old graduate student and a teaching assistant for architect Gerhard Kallmann when the city hall competition arose. Their “heroically sculptural and democratically open design for Boston City Hall catalyzed the city’s urban revival in the late 1960s and embodied the era’s idealism and civic activism.” – The New York Times
The Planned Online Six-Hour Epic Pauline Oliveros Opera
The founder of Opera Povera posted the idea to perform an Oliveros opera, and the opera world responded quickly and in numbers. The plan for the participant opera and fundraiser for musicians: “More than 250 artists from around the world will gather for an epic online performance of the late composer’s The Lunar Opera: Deep Listening for _Tunes, an open-form opera in which the enlisted performers create their own characters, movements and sound based on sonic cues known only to themselves.” – Los Angeles Times
Is It Great Or Terrible That Quibi Is Launching In The Middle Of The Pandemic?
Quibi – whose ads you’ve likely seen if you’ve been online at all in the past four months – was meant to be a short-form video platform that people watched in moments of their commute or at quickly grabbed coffee breaks. Meg Whitman thinks people stuck at home will take breaks from screens with, uh, screens: “‘People have said, ‘I’m stuck in the house, I’m home-schooling, I need a break,’’ Whitman, the former CEO of eBay and Hewlett-Packard told me on a Zoom conference call with [co-founder Jeffrey] Katzenberg the other day. ‘‘I’m trying to keep everyone glued together and I need a 10-minute break. And by the way, I might watch three, four, five, six episodes of something that you have to offer.’ So I think people are going to come in new ways.'” – The Atlantic
Online Dance Parties Are The New Clubs, Workouts, And Social Life
Dance classes, “clubbing” from home, and other dance-related videos (and Instagram Stories, Zooms, etc.) are keeping loneliness at bay as nearly everyone has orders to shelter in place. Some are very much like in-person life: “Attendees often dress up for a night out, even if their corner of the party is located in their living rooms. A bouncer will eject party-goers who don’t follow the rules. Attendees can even make a donation via PayPal, an approximation of a cover charge that organizers use to pay the DJs and drag artists who perform each night.” – Globe and Mail (Canada)
Arlene Schnitzer, Gallery Pioneer And Massive Funder To The Arts In The Pacific Northwest, Has Died At 91
The influence of Schnitzer – whose name is on the Oregon Symphony’s hall – on the Portland and Pacific Northwest arts scene can hardly be overstated. “Schnitzer was a towering cultural figure in Portland and the Pacific Northwest, giving many millions of dollars over several decades to the Portland Art Museum, other cultural organizations, health and medical organizations including Oregon Health and Science University, and Jewish causes. With her husband, fellow philanthropist Harold Schnitzer, who died in 2011, she helped shape Portland’s cultural scene: Between 1993 and Harold’s death they donated more than $80 million to various causes. Their naming gift helped transform downtown Portland’s run-down Paramount Theatre into what became the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, home of the Oregon Symphony, much of the White Bird dance series, and other performances.” – Oregon ArtsWatch
Agatha Christie Is (Still) The Best-Selling Novelist Of All Time
Sure, Shakespeare and the Bible outsell Agatha Christie, but otherwise, she’s the tops. “Agatha Christie’s novels have sold more than one billion copies in the English language and another billion internationally.” Thirty percent of USians who like to read started their mystery reading with an Agatha Christie book. And then there’s Mousetrap. – Literary Hub
Hollywood’s Costumers Are Still Sewing, But Now It’s Face Masks For Survival
Tens of thousands of Hollywood and theatre workers are out of work right now. But they’ve found a rallying cause: “With no end in sight to the crisis, costumers — whose job is to create and fit costumes for actors on sets — are plying their sewing and design skills to help address the very real shortages of face masks and other protective clothing among medical workers.” – Los Angeles Times
Suellen Rocca, Fiercely Original Artist And Member Of Chicago’s Hairy Who, Has Died At 76
Rocca and five others, former classmates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “came together under the sway of influences as disparate as Dubuffet, Native American art, hand-painted store signs, the Sears catalog and the natural-history displays at the Field Museum to create a rambunctious form of painting and sculpture that tacked hard against prevailing orthodoxies.” – The New York Times
Zoom Seemed Too Good To Be True
And, turns out, it was. This is why New York just banned it as a tool for teachers: “Zoom contains a number of critical privacy and security flaws, as educators have been learning the hard way. Anyone with a Zoom meeting link can ‘Zoombom’ attendees and broadcast inappropriate content, including pornography, depending on settings established by the meeting creator. In some cases, intruders have been able to hijack Zoom users’ webcams. In addition, Zoom’s iOS app has been sharing data with third parties including Facebook, in a potential violation of children’s privacy regulations.” – Fast Company
The Drum Dance Group That Isn’t Letting A Little Thing Like Social Distance Get In The Way
The group is called Huqqullaaqatigiit, and the drum dancers have been getting together every week for more than a decade to preserve language, music, and the words of elders in the community. Last week, they decided to try it all over Facebook Live. – CBC
Julia Alvarez Says That We Should Rely On Literature To Get Through This
Alvarez, the author of In the Time of the Butterflies and the new Afterlife, isn’t trying to be facetious or to downplay the importance of health care workers or grocery clerks. But, quoting Robert Frost, she adds, “I use [literature] in the broad sense. I don’t mean just written stories. I mean oral stories. I mean music. I mean dance. All these things people are seeking solace in. Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.” – NPR
Chinese Film Industry Restarts, If Slowly
Given strict health controls by the production teams, including quarantines for the entire film crew, “studios have reopened in Ningbo, Shanghai, Qingdao and Xi’an, and TV series such as Legend of Fei and Like a Flowing River have resumed production. High-profile film shoots, including Zhang Yimou’s Impasse, are also reported to have begun filming again.” – The Guardian (UK)
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MoMA Has Canceled All Educator Contracts, Saying It May Not Need Educators For Years
The email was grim, and employees who had done all of the prep work for April tours aren’t being paid for that work. On the other side of things for educators – though not for 76 other staff members who were laid off – “MoMA’s email to educators came only days before New York City’s Whitney Museum sent its own freelance education staff a hopeful message: it hopes to launch a new online teaching initiative that could keep them employed.” – Hyperallergic
The Errant Hydroflask In ‘Little Women’
This is what happens when we’re all watching movies all of the time: A fan spots something off, makes a TikTok, and then the NYT reports on it. What the heck, we need humor, and this is faintly amusing – apparently Timothée Chalamet’s water bottles make an appearance in the Laurence household. – The New York Times
Boston’s Principal Ballerina In Canceled Carmen Says ‘It Feels Like The Stage Was Pulled Out From Under Us’
Lia Cirio: “For a few days I was really in wallowing mode, just watching Netflix and not being very active. But then my mom sent me a quote on Instagram that said ‘Victory comes from finding opportunities in problems,’ and that inspired me to do something to help me cope. … I created some shirts to sell, and the profits benefit the Greater Boston Food Bank and the Boston Artists Relief Fund that they just set up. The design is just something simple— [they say] ‘Art heals, wash your hands.'” – Boston Magazine
How Are Bookstores Surviving, If They Are At All?
Here’s what’s going on with some bookstores in Los Angeles. The Ripped Bodice in Culver City, which has a big Twitter following, offered a “care package” deal. Co-owner Leah Koch: “‘Those have been so popular. We put them up before we closed to foot traffic. Within 48 hours, we had 230 orders,’ Koch says, adding that the store now has a waitlist for the care package service and, as of this writing, there were 700 people on the waitlist.” Other bookstores? It’s not great news. – The Hollywood Reporter
After The Kennedy Center Laid Off Many Of Its Employees, Congress May Ask For That $25 Million Back
But much of the money is earmarked already, and may benefit furloughed employees: “About $7.5 million of the bailout will cover six months of benefits — pension, social security and health care — for all employees, including those furloughed. The center continues to negotiate with its insurance company to fund health-care benefits after May 31. Another $1.75 million is for future artists’ contracts and fees.” But both Republicans and Democrats have some issues with the way this has shaken out. – The Washington Post
Chiura Obata’s Career Was Interrupted By Internment During WWII. Now A Retrospective Of His Work Has Been Stilled By The Virus
“Suddenly he was in a drab, dehumanizing place, first a stable in California, then the barracks of Topaz, Utah, where he spent most of his time in internment. It was bleak, hot, arid and dusty, and he missed green things, trees and gardens. He moved quickly to establish an art school, both at Tanforan and later Topaz. And when he represented the camp at Topaz, the sense of displacement became dreamlike, even surreal, a luminous landscape that looked just a bit scorched, with a few dark buildings in the midground standing in for the enormity of what was happening there.” – Washington Post
How Podcasting Is Changing
The podcasting business is changing at the speed of sound. There’s a pivot toward profit. And while that’s great in the short run for public podcasting, it also attracts new players and an aggressive new business model. Public podcasts that often started as spinoffs or experiments are becoming lucrative. NPR recently projected that podcasting would account within three years for 20% of its revenues. In public-broadcasting–adjacent venues, The Daily reportedly made millions last year, and Slate draws half its revenue from podcasting. – Current
How Dance Helps Me Think And Thinking Helps Me Dance
For most of my career, dancing and academic research were two separate but equally weighted spheres. However, over the years, I have become more and more aware that many people viewed dance as a less valuable way of thinking and working. Dance, in their minds, was a purely emotive activity consisting of uncritical, spontaneous movement or a purely athletic endeavour whose sole purpose is to defy our body’s physical limits. Part of the reason why this view of dance persists, I think, stems from a deeply rooted prejudice against embodied vocations. – Aeon
Why AI Can’t Predict The Value Of Art
To bring real value, any A.I. application needs loads of quality data—which is doubly problematic in our small and notoriously opaque industry (dealers l-o-v-e to hoard sales info). Without greater transparency, A.I. can do only so much. – Artnet
Inside This Season’s Most Controversial Book – The Woody Allen Memoir
I spoke to several industry professionals; almost all were reluctant to play Monday morning quarterback without the promise of anonymity—if you’re making a book deal in secret, perhaps it’s worth interrogating why. – The New Republic