While traditional museums are discussing closures and mergers, the for-profit industry around experiential or immersive art is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a business that currently has no audience in the U.S. because of the pandemic. - The New York Times
By the time the exhibition closed in March, because of the pandemic, the college had scaled back a plan to host programming that directly focused on the investigation. Forensic Architecture complained strongly but without success. Ultimately, the college told the curator who had coordinated the exhibition, Sophie Landres, that her contract would not be renewed. - The New York Times
Released as part of the BA's annual membership survey, the number of independent bookshops holding membership at the end of 2020 rose to 967 shops, up from 890 shops in 2019, 883 in 2018 and 868 in 2017. This figure marks the highest number of independent bookshops in BA membership since 2013, as the period of growth was preceded by two decades of decline. - The Bookseller
Eleven more cases came from The Kominsky Method, a Michael Douglas-starring Netflix series where aging actors confront mortality. Around the same time, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 database, which tracks workplace outbreaks from the past 14 days, Netflix had nine more positive cases; NBC Universal, including some crew of the show Mr. Mayor, had 23; CBS reported 45. - The Daily Beast
The museum has reported one of its worst attendance figures ever, with around 2.7 million visitors—a 72% drop compared to 9.6 million in 2019. - The Art Newspaper
Rattle said his reasons for accepting the Munich job were “entirely personal, enabling me to better manage the balance of my work and be close enough to home to be present for my children in a meaningful way”. - The Guardian
Whether or not these fever-dream images show the actual point of insurrection or are, more likely, the inevitable byproduct of twenty-first century-rioters armed with smartphones and social-media accounts, their power shouldn’t be underestimated. These pictures will now constitute a powerful folklore for a whole subculture of whacked-out, anti-establishment far-righters, the latest chapter in alt-right visual storytelling which includes the equally absurd Pepe The Frog. - Art Review
The founder and conductor of Canada's Luminous Voices, which now uses the cars' FM transmitters, a mixer, and wireless mics for rehearsal and, crucially, performance too, says, "For us not to be able to , it's like a whole part of our soul is sort of taken out. And we need to find ways to somehow fill that gap." - NPR
Writers have to listen as well as read. "As I read The Waves, I started to 'hear' language as if for the first time. It was as though a window flew open, and the sounds of the author’s words rushed in. I began to notice the sonic patterns of Woolf’s sentences, how she composed a music all her own with her rhythmic language and sentence structure." - The New York Times
If you have elderly parents and kids to care for, not much. "The pandemic has been through all these different stages and you’re constantly moving between boredom and terror. We recently converted our dining table to a ping-pong table and I felt that was the final stage of getting through the winter." - The Guardian (UK)
The ballet joins Kansas City's other major performing arts organizations, which will certainly have an economic impact on KC's central performing arts center. - Kansas City Star
The MacArthur Fellow, who has also won the National Book Award and lives with her partner and two children in Brooklyn, is building Baldwin Arts, an artists colony for writers, composers, and visual artists of color. Lots of free time there, right? "We all find our space. In my bubble, I’m working on a book or a screenplay, going back and forth between the two. I really do try to find that sweet spot, those four or five hours a day of uninterrupted writing time." - The Cut
That's not the only work making a claim that France has an extremely long way to go in reckoning with gender inequality in every arena of life, including and perhaps especially the arts. The author of I Hate Men: "Feminists have spent a lot of time and energy reassuring men that no, we don’t really hate them, that they’re welcome. Not much has happened in exchange." - The New York Times
This isn't great, since each musician needs rather a lot of paperwork - and it's possible, though unclear, that their instruments may need a deal too. "The new agreement means British orchestras may choose to reduce the number of European countries they visit to cut down on administrative costs." - The Guardian (UK)
