Earlier this month, with the Netherlands under COVID lockdown, raiders broke into a small museum and took van Gogh’s Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring. Writer Daniel Dumas talks to two experts in the recovery of stolen art about where the painting might be now, how and where they might try to sell it, who likely buyers might be, and how art thieves get caught. – Esquire
Artists Have To Turn On Peak Performance On Demand. So Do Athletes. Enter Sports Psychologists
There’s a lot more money in pro sports, and athletes have benefited from psychologists who teach them how to turn in their best on demand. So it makes sense that the sports doctors are working with artists. – San Francisco Classical Voice
How’s The Bolshoi Handling The Epidemic And Shutdown? Nervously
In an extensive Q&A, Bolshoi general director Vladimir Urin talks about how the dancers, singers and instrumentalists are and aren’t continuing to get paid, how everyone is trying to stay in shape, trying to plan for a very uncertain future, what the Bolshoi’s (and the arts’) relationship with audiences will be (including the prices they’ll be willing to pay) post-COVID, and the best- and worst-case scenarios for Russia’s flagship ballet/opera house (“if we don’t open in September, it could go as far as the destruction of the theatre”). – Kommersant (Moscow) via Melmoth
Here’s To The Workers Disinfecting The World’s Great Historic Sites
“While non-essential workers are still housebound, pictures from around the world show surreal scenes of Tyvek suit-wearing workers spraying down eerily empty spaces like Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,” the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Great Mosque of Mecca. – Artnet
Even Burning Man Has Been Canceled
The giant annual alterna-conclave doesn’t take place until the end of August, but even so, “the organizers of Burning Man announced on Friday that they will not be assembling 80,000 people in the Nevada desert this summer to build giant works of art and then set them on fire.” – The Guardian
Essential Tool To Survive The Pandemic? Imagination
“Pandemics, wars, and other social crises often create new attitudes, needs, and behaviors, which need to be managed. We believe imagination — the capacity to create, evolve, and exploit mental models of things or situations that don’t yet exist — is the crucial factor in seizing and creating new opportunities, and finding new paths to growth.” – Harvard Business Review
How Museums In Europe Are Faring
Most are shut down, though in places such as Albania and Sweden where museums remain open, they’re seeing increases in visitors. Closed museums report an 80 percent loss of income. Many are increasing digital content and there is a spike in visitors there. – Arts Professional
How Artists Bear Witness To Events Of Their Time
Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler chose one way, conducting in Nazi Germany through World War II. Dmitry Shostakovich chose another in deep Soviet Russia. Joseph Horowitz contrasts the two in this podcast. – The American Interest
Comics May Not Survive The Pandemic
Comic-book publishing, comics stores, the writers, the artists, and everyone are in serious trouble. “The industry has been throttled at every juncture. Comic-store owners have shuttered their shops and the distribution of new titles has been frozen. Writers and artists continue to produce work, not knowing how or when readers will be able to see it.” – The New York Times
The View From Quarantine Easels
Artists from San Diego, Chicago, Saskatchewan, New York, and more weigh in. Dia Bassett, for instance: “With the COVID-19 pandemic, my life as a mom to a toddler is more confined. My parents are not able to come help with caregiving, so I’m caring for my daughter full-time. It means I create art on the fly, so I have some of my old childhood paintings and college drawings tucked in a corner by the couch to pull out at any given moment.” – Hyperallergic
For Theatre History’s Sake, Record Your Plays And Musicals
When there’s another pandemic, your theatre can be the one making history with broadcasts on YouTube or, who knows, something on Quibi. – The Stage (UK)
Shailene Woodley, Doing (Now Online) Movie Release Press From A Big Social Distance
The actor, who had success as a child and in her teens and early twenties, says that social isolation with her dog isn’t the worst thing. “This feels like heaven in a lot of ways because I don’t have to talk to people, I don’t have to deal with people, I don’t even have to look at people. I can play the game of being an extrovert when I need to — it’s a big part of my job — but my happy place is honestly being alone.” – The New York Times
The Guggenheim Is The Latest Institution To Lay Off, Furlough, And Reduce Benefits
The museum says it’s facing a $10 million shortfall and must furlough 92 people and reduce the salaries for 85 more. The furloughed staff members, “which union officials said include about a dozen people who work in a clandestine storage facility, will be paid through April 19 and receive health benefits covered by the museum through July 31 or the date of rehire, whichever comes first.” – The New York Times
Theatre’s Stages Of Grief
Idled theatres can’t earn money, can’t meet grant requirement deadlines, and have nothing they can do with huge sets or out-of-work actors or stage crews. It’s not OK. “O’Gara conceded that theatre’s future appears ‘pretty dire.'” – American Theatre
What Did It Mean To Exhibit The Shroud Of Turin Online?
When the Archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia, announced the church would livestream the Shroud, things in the world of the mysterious sacred artifact got a bit weird. “Whether Nosiglia knows it or not, his decision to exhibit the Shroud of Turin virtually in real time during a global pandemic finds neat points of synchronicity with the history of the shroud’s rise to becoming Christianity’s most famous—and notorious—sacred artifact. It also forces us to rethink the limits and capabilities of digital mediation as life is exiled to virtual platforms.” – Slate
Louis Johnson, Acclaimed Dancer, Choreographer, And Director, Has Died At 90
Johnson choreographed the film adaptation of The Wiz and won a Tony for his choreography for Purlie. He performed in both stage and screen versions of Damn Yankees, created works for the Alvin Ailey and for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and inspired Jerome Robbins’ “Afternoon of a Faun.” He began the dance department at Howard University. Carmen de Lavallade, his costar from the 1954 musical House of Flowers, said “You know those hard rubber balls that bounce? He reminded me of that because he had such elevation, and he was quick and tough. He was low to the ground, but he could get off the floor, and he could jump high. My goodness, he was strong. … And there was always a sense of humor in his movement — the jauntiness that he had.” – The New York Times
Novelist Ann Patchett, Alone In Her Bookshop With Her Dogs, Says The Store Feel Closer To The Community
Patchett isn’t actually alone because her co-owner and staff are still coming in, carefully distanced from each other, to work so they can ship books to all of those desperately wanting new reads while self-quarantining. “I understand now that we’re a part of our community as never before, and that our community is the world. When a friend of mine, stuck in his tiny New York apartment, told me he dreamed of being able to read the new Louise Erdrich book, I made that dream come true. I can solve nothing, I can save no one, but dammit, I can mail Patrick a copy of The Night Watchman.” – The Guardian (UK)
Bruce Baillie, ‘Essential’ Avant-Garde Bay Area Filmmaker, Has Died At 88
Baillie “personified the Bay Area experimental cinema of the 1960s as an independent filmmaker and consummate 16-millimeter craftsman whose most extraordinary movie is a single panning shot.” – The New York Times
Playing To An Empty Cathedral On Easter
Organists and cantors prepare to play for live streams instead of live services. On the other hand, sometimes that’s a bigger crowd: “Fewer than 600 people would tune in to watch the cathedral’s Sunday Mass streams before the pandemic, said Joe Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York — and that number was up to more than 100,000 on Palm Sunday.” – The New York Times
Theatre Has Moved Online. Maybe Not All Of It Should Have
Peter Marks: “The good news is, you can now access plays and musicals of every style online, from every part of the country and many other places around the globe, a lot of itfree. The bad news is, you can access plays and musicals of every style online.” – Washington Post
A New Online Job Market For Artists
HireArtists.org is designed to work similarly to TaskRabbit or Fiverr, websites that link gig workers to employers looking for people to do one-off jobs. It invites photographers, dancers, and website designers, among those in other disciplines, to sell their skills and knowledge to anyone looking for art lessons, or even to buy artworks. It’s free to sign up, and unlike other sites, HireArtists doesn’t collect a fee. – Artnet
One of UK’s Top Book Wholesalers Had To Stop Shipping. It’s Started Again — One Order At A Time
At the end of March, Gardners announced that it could not keep staffers at a safe distance from each other and still pack and send out books. Four days later, the company was back at work — shipping orders to home customers, a skeleton staff standing well apart. – Melville House