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We Can Rebuild, But Why?
Merely stabilizing the economy, or preventing the absolute worst of all possible worlds, will not be enough. In a short few weeks, the COVID-19 recession has made painfully clear our profound economic weaknesses. We have long known that 40 percent of Americans cannot afford an unexpected $400 expense. Now we are beginning to understand exactly […]
Awareness: Our Digital Selves Are Our Real Selves
It would be easy to dismiss the rise of “social distance socializing” as a product of pure necessity, a stopgap until we are, hopefully, able to safely congregate in person again. But these online gatherings are the culmination of a much broader cultural shift: the revelation that so much of our lives is already lived […]
Jennifer Schantz Is New Director Of The NY Public Library’s Performing Arts Collection
Schantz, 51, currently the executive vice president and chief operating officer at the New-York Historical Society, will take up the position in May. She succeeds Jacqueline Davis, who has led the library for two decades. The performing arts library, located in Lincoln Center, is one of the New York Public Library’s four research divisions, with […]
Vital Film Hub Shuts Down With Layoffs At Film At Lincoln Center
Film at Lincoln Center announced massive internal upheaval on Friday. A longtime hub of film culture in New York City with an influential reach around the country, the organization furloughed or laid off approximately 50% of the full-time staff as well as all of the part-time staff. – Los Angeles Times
Musician Sues Pension Fund For Risky Investments And Wins $28 Million Settlement
Thursday’s settlement deal in a case brought by a onetime Philadelphia area saxophonist against a $2 billion musicians’ pension fund shows that the trustees who ratify advisers’ and outside managers’ investment picks can be held responsible for their mistakes. – Philadelphia Inquirer
The Best Sketch Comedian Online Now
Sure, everything’s online now, but some comedians have been doing the work for a much longer time than the last two weeks. They didn’t need to adjust “because they were already there, particularly those in the growing genre of ‘front-facing camera comedy’: short character sketches played directly to the camera. Owing a debt to the hectic editing […]
Thieves Steal Van Gogh From Museum Closed Because Of Virus
The Singer Laren museum, just outside the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam, said van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring” was stolen in an overnight raid. The painting — created in 1884 by the Dutch master, according to Reuters — was on loan from another Dutch institution, the Groninger Museum in the city […]
Why We Should Bail Out Classical Music
Matthew Walther: “If it is worth bailing out restaurants and bars and other places where people congregate together for merriment and diversion, we must not neglect those institutions in which men and women come together for something that satisfies all the deepest longings of our species.” – The Week
Memes Belong In Museums
Think about the doge meme, for instance. “This meme is iconic, woah heritage, such icon.” (But for real: Memes show the power of photography and creativity, and the top memes deserve to be archived.) – BBC
A Choir Practice That Turned Deadly
Sixty singers showed up in early March for a 2.5-hour choir practice. Now, three weeks later, “45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead.” – Los Angeles Times
Who Gets The Credit – And Money – For An Artist’s Quick Rise?
A lesson in not making desperate promises, perhaps: “When Derek Fordjour was a little-known art student at Hunter College, before Michael Ovitz and Beyoncé began collecting his work, before his paintings came to sell for more than $100,000, the fledgling artist struck a deal with a New York gallery. He agreed, according to a lawsuit now being […]
As The UK Public Saw What Was Coming, Book Buying Soared
Even as government officials seemed a bit cavalier about it all – talking about herd immunity, for instance – people sensed that a shutdown was coming. “Sales of fiction rose by a third, while children’s education went up 234% to the third highest level on record. Puzzle books, handicrafts and true crime also saw sharp […]
Can Community Radio Survive With Its Unique Sound Intact?
Sure, they’re still as quirky and gap-filling as ever, except for one rather large problem. WFMU Jersey City’s station manager: “This is the situation that so many broadcasters dream of! … You have a global, captive audience, and everyone can share and commiserate their experiences. But it’s not safe to go to the station!”- The […]
Cal Shakes Cancels Its 2020 Season
AD Eric Ting: “This may seem like an extraordinary decision, but taking into account the incredible uncertainty of this moment, the cost of producing a season at the Bruns, of which ticket sales only account for a third, the current and long-term disruption in fundraising, … we feel this is our best course of action.” […]
In Europe, Cinema Production Has Been Thrown Into Utter Crisis
Even before COVID-19 shut down production completely, three historic companies were in trouble – deep in debt to creditors, troubled by streaming, etc. Then seven feature films in Paris alone stopped dead, one leaving a street recreated in WWII-era styles. Some relief: “The National Cinema Center (CNC) plans to relieve the short-term cash flow of […]
How Can Visual Artists Survive?
Museums are silent, and the Tate Modern’s 20th anniversary celebration has gone mute. But the small galleries and artists of Britain are in much more dire circumstances. Says one close observer, “We might lose the really interesting emergent art, the stuff of the future, if we are not careful.” – The Observer (UK)
Sarasota Ballet Will Support Its Dancers Through The Original End Of The Season
The ballet says that, “We also recognized that while many of our dancers have made their homes here in Sarasota, and others would be able to easily return to their home states/countries, many of the Company were not going to be so lucky. With our dancers from countries like Italy, who are unable to return […]
The Producers Of Dystopian Fiction Are Thinking Again
But it’s a complex consideration: “‘You do feel guilty about putting these anxieties in people’s minds,’ said Bruce Miller, the creator and showrunner of Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. ‘There’s no way not to feel like you somehow wished things into being.’” – The New York Times
Is This A Craft Renaissance?
People in Britain – perhaps spurred on by Brexit fears, or perhaps it’s just a cyclical thing, this “return to traditional craft” – are learning everything from vase painting to making spinning wheels and clay pipes. – The Observer (UK)
When Your Book About Getting Through Hard Times Comes Out In The Middle Of A Pandemic
Carmen Esposito’s Save Yourself was meant to be released on a book tour that saw the comedian and podcaster performing in cities across the country. But then, COVID-19. In the book, she writes, “Humans are scared out of our minds and want to be saved. We want to know why we are here, what we […]
Arts Critics Reflect On Their Lives Before Social Isolation
The Observer‘s theatre critic, for instance: “‘I am a big believer in walking as writing (or vice versa),’ she says. ‘If I get stuck, I charge around the square and often find a sentence slips into place. I work out what I think more easily on the hoof – going to or from the theatre, […]
One Art Form That Can Survive The Pandemic: Radio Productions
At least, once the show has caught up to where people are. “The BBC has revealed that its long-running BBC Radio 4 soap The Archers will have its first coronavirus-related storyline in early May. Recording is typically done weeks in advance of broadcast, meaning writers have so far been unable to reflect the rapidly evolving […]
Zoom Isn’t Sending As Much Of Your Personal Data To Facebook Anymore
Since many of us are having to use Zoom for work and choosing to use it for seeing family and friends, that’s a good change. And we’ll take good news right now, honestly. – Vice
Apparently, Everyone Wants To Read Camus Right Now
That’s right, Camus’ The Plague is leading a wave of “pestilence fiction.” Get this: “The British publisher of The Plague, Penguin Classics, says it is struggling to keep up with orders. ‘We’ve gone from shipping quantities in the low hundreds every month to the mid-thousands.’” – The Guardian (UK)
Composer And Conductor Krzysztof Penderecki Has Died At 86
Penderecki, composer of the scores for The Exorcist, The Shining, and Wild at Heart, also wrote operas and choral works, and won multiple Grammys. “Penderecki’s stated aim as an avant-gardist in the early 1960s was to ‘liberate sound beyond all tradition,’ and his emotionally charged experimental 1960 work ‘Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima’, for 52 strings, brought […]