As a culturally curious teenager, I had made the 20-minute hike from my Bronx apartment to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a once popular, now little-known pantheon for bronze busts of great men and women, some by well-known sculptors (including four busts by Daniel Chester French, two by Augustus Saint-Gaudens). – Lee Rosenbaum

The Mellon Foundation’s announcement that its grant-making will focus entirely on social justice is not a wakeup call. The alarm has been sounding for years. Business as usual (that is, we decide what we want to present and ‘they’ should come) is not tenable. – Doug Borwick

Among the at-home dances I’ve seen recently, one strikes me as truly suitable to performers who have to be isolated: Anna Sokolow’s 1955 Rooms, recreated for the pandemic as Rooftop Rooms. – Deborah Jowitt

If we are experts in music, we need to know about now. Imagine a scientist who said: ‘You know I only repeat the experiments of the 19th century. I’ve really worked at them. I get fantastic results.’ But is that science? – Bruce Brubaker

FDR’s Works Progress Administration was the closest Washington had come to emulating European arts subsidies. At the same time, the New Deal made a devil’s pact with race – and the WPA was no exception. – Joseph Horowitz

From early March on, there have been increasing demonstrations of the jazz community taking care of itself and its own. – Howard Mandel

I regret that I can only offer you my camcorder’s sound complete with audience noise. But there is enough spirit and inspiring artistry to make up for that, I think. – Michal Shapiro

Sotheby’s “LIVE GLOBAL AUCTION EVENT” was, per yesterday’s post-sale press release, “an unprecedented live-streamed event, with banks of telephone-bidding colleagues beamed in from around the world.” This complicated set-up worked well enough, but at the expense of “auction fever,” the contagion that can spread when bidding happens the old-fashioned way: concentrated in one salesroom packed with live attendees. – Lee Rosenbaum

I don’t know how I’ve managed to survive the simultaneous losses of my beloved spouse and the art form to which I have devoted more than a decade and a half of my life. But I’m still here, and if Hilary’s death and the closing of America’s theaters didn’t kill me, then I figure I’m in it for the long haul. I hope you are, too. – Terry Teachout

In January I made the difficult decision to leave The New School when my current contract ends. My heart and mind have been calling me to other lands, to other ways of being and living in the world, and to center work that has been squeezed into the margins the past few years. – Diane Ragsdale

Whenever someone of visibility in the music industry proclaims that what the pandemic lock-down world needs now is this (whatever that is), the chances are good that it’s here already. – David Patrick Stearns

I knew that my contrarian suggestions about what to do with the controversial sculptures of Confederate leaders on Richmond’s Monument Avenue would provoke some pushback, but I hoped for the constructive critiques that I’ve come to expect from my knowledgeable, insightful readers. That’s exactly what I got. – Lee Rosenbaum

A tribute to the brash, quick-talking, brilliant, no-nonsense scholar, writer, colleague, and friend whom I once taught, worked with, and learned from. – Deborah Jowitt

Sotheby’s has quietly upped its charges for purchasers of its offerings: An “Overhead Premium” of 1% of the auction hammer price will supplement its buyer’s premium, effective Aug. 1. – Lee Rosenbaum

George Floyd art gathered May 31 – June 11 in Over-the-Rhine and downtown Cincinnati – Margy Waller

My essay, “To What End Permanence?,” seeks to get beyond the question of economic solvency to examine other signs that it may be time to shut a thing down and other motivations for closing. – Diane Ragsdale

After initially resisting the resisters’ demands that it halt its production of napalm, Dow stopped making it in 1969. Now Warren Kanders, who resigned under political pressure last July from his position as vice-chairman of the Whitney Museum’s board, has announced a similar reversal. – Lee Rosenbaum

Long ago Barry Hessenius charged us to move from thinking of the pursuit of equity as a “issue” to making it an obsession. So, if “doing” is where we go now, what does the doing look like? – Doug Borwick

In a striking departure from their customary reluctance to take strong political stands that would alienate some visitors, art museums around the country, speaking separately but with one voice, responded to the asphyxiation of George Floyd. – Lee Rosenbaum

I hear from nearly all corners of the arts sector that there is “no going back to normal” — that something fundamental needs to be redesigned in our systems to make them more equitable, healthy, and sustainable. If so, it matters which arts organizations survive the next two years and which go away, and it matters how arts organizations are defining their short-term and long-term crises and goals. – Diane Ragsdale

Our loss yesterday of Christo, the canny conceptual artist with tangible appeal, is a poignant reminder of more innocent times — 16 days in early 2005 when New Yorkers from all walks of life converged on Central Park for one peaceful purpose — to walk together basking in the luminosity of flowing canopies of saffron rip-stop nylon that were hung in a procession of some 7,500 frames. – Lee Rosenbaum

The Gershwin threat was seemingly felt by all American-born classical musicians: they feared his genius. European-born classical musicians weren’t threatened, and the list of Gershwin admirers includes Otto Klemperer, Jascha Heifetz, Dmitri Shostakovich, etc. The Gershwin moment is right now. Music historians study and esteem him (they never did before). We no longer segregate Rhapsody in Blue on pops concerts (as the Boston Symphony did until 1997). – Joseph Horowitz

Some time ago, I wrote on Rifftides, “The Czech Frantisek Uhliř is one of the greatest bassists in the world.” Leading his septet on his new release, Story of my life, he is as powerful as when I first heard him in Prague in 1993. – Doug Ramsey

Clayton Patterson’s importance in general, but especially on the Lower East Side of New York City, comes from his commitment to social and political values for the good of his community. He has put his life on the line to document and preserve it in a way that few are brave enough to do. – Jan Herman

A message from Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti, which hit my inbox late Friday, included a boldfaced passage that struck me (and probably some of his firm’s clients) as an implied gibe at archrival Sotheby’s. – Lee Rosenbaum

“Jay,” the name he went by among close friends, was widely regarded as one of Germany’s premiere second-generation Beat writers. But his narrative fiction — like that of William S. Burroughs, a mentor with whom he was associated — was more experimental and closer to Brion Gysin’s or J.G. Ballard’s than to Jack Kerouac’s or Allen Ginsberg’s. – Jan Herman

Time and again while listening to the new recording of David Hertzberg’s opera, I asked myself, What zeitgeist did this arrive from? What cultural phenomenon contributed to why it was written now? And why have audiences responded to it so readily? Here are the pieces that don’t even begin to add up. – David Patrick Stearns

“It behooves us to spend some time considering how we might prepare not just for a new financial reality but for a new social one. It will be important to be and be seen as partners in making a better and more livable world – not just by being presenters of arts events but by being valuable community citizens.” – Doug Borwick

One of the most controversial acts in the ever-controversial life of Dmitri Shostakovich was his tortured decision in 1960 to join the Communist Party. It is not mentioned in Testimony (1979) – the composer’s influential memoirs, collaboratively written with Solomon Volkov. But Volkov offered his own view, for the first time, in a Zoom chat the other day produced by PostClassical Ensemble. – Joseph Horowitz

Opera America had asked me to speak at their annual conference this year, but of course the conference was canceled and moved online. So I made this video for the online conference, talking about the influence of technology on opera and how audience expectations evolve as they use technology. – Douglas McLennan