During the height of the first wave of the coronavirus, it seemed this day would never come. Now, “it’s odd how the surreal can become de rigueur. At the Gardner I barely noticed the masks, the arrows on the floor, the laminated signs tacked virtually everywhere.” – The Boston Globe
Julia Garner’s Newfound Netflix Fame And Lockdown Angst
A casting director’s dismissive “You should try indie movies, honey” changed Garner’s career, and life. – The Hollywood Reporter
An Outdoor Dance Festival… And Some Hope
From this vantage point early in its run — and I’m pronouncing this with my fingers crossed that no virus outbreak occurs — the festival can be seen as a cultural marker in ways both subtle and magnificent. It’s a psychic harbinger, a sign that performing arts survive and that smart, creative planning can win — at least for the small audiences each night, who are screened on arrival and sit on socially distanced blankets or benches, or watch from their cars, and for the coronavirus-tested artists performing there. – Washington Post
The Future Of Dance – An Online Strategy
“Whether or not companies can figure out how to incorporate digital into their strategy is going to decide which will fold. Linking digital programming to data, marketing and operations is a long-term necessity. COVID has only made this more clear.” – Pointe
How The Young Vic Was Born, 50 Years Ago
The idea came from Joan Plowright and her husband, Laurence Olivier, who was then running the National Theatre at the Old Vic. They and colleagues wanted an additional theatre that would target audiences aged 16 to 24 and give young actors a place to develop. Here’s how they made it happen. – The Stage
BBC Proms: There Will Be Live Concerts, But No Live Audiences
“All concerts will be broadcast live via the Royal Albert Hall website and on BBC Radio 3, but there will be no live audience. The fortnight of live performances comes after two months of archive Proms broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Four. They will take place from Friday 28 August to Saturday 12 September for the Last Night of the Proms.” – BBC Music Magazine
NY’s High Line Asks For Public Help In Choosing Next Sculpture
The non-profit organisation High Line Art, which commissions public art projects on and around the elevated park in Chelsea, launched a platform of artist proposals this week, and says that comments from the public will be reviewed by its curatorial staff. The deciding vote, however, will ultimately be made by Cecilia Alemani, the director and chief curator of High Line Art, and her staff. – The Art Newspaper
Report: Cultural Institutions Spent Almost $8 Billion On Buildings Last Year
The latest figures for 2019 represent a slowdown in the growth of the number of completed projects seen each year since 2016, as well as the fourth consecutive drop in the number of announced projects, which hit a peak of 135 in 2016. – Artnet
AMC Says It Will Open Its Movie Theatres Next Week
Starting August 20th, AMC plans to have more than 100 theaters open, and it says it will continue opening locations “such that about two-thirds of our theatres across the country should be open no later than September 3.” – The Verge
How A Turkish Historical Drama Became ‘The Muslim ‘Game Of Thrones”
Ertuğrul, a five-season dizi (that’s Turkish for telenovela-crossed-with-historical-epic) about the father of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, “is now so popular that it has been dubbed into six languages and broadcast in 72 countries. On YouTube alone, Ertuğrul has surpassed 1.5bn views.” – The Guardian
Berliners Worry About The Health Of The City’s Visual Arts
More than 5,000 visual artists from around the world are based here, according to statistics compiled by city authorities. Despite high-profile closures, there are still more than 300 galleries, and before Covid-19 restrictions, there were public art talks nearly every night. The postponed Berlin Biennial is going forward on Sept. 5, and Gallery Weekend, an event in which about 50 local galleries court international collectors, has moved to mid-September from its usual springtime slot. Many art world insiders blame Berlin’s policymakers, however, for failing to develop a solid institutional infrastructure for contemporary art, including securing real estate for its display. – The New York Times
Staff At Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Say Director’s Firing Was Justified
Nathalie Bondil was ousted on 13 July by the museum’s board of directors, which cited “disturbing” reports from staff members about a “toxic” workplace atmosphere. The dismissal followed an investigation into the employee allegations that the board commissioned from a consulting firm. – The Art Newspaper
Why Exams Continue To Be The Gold Standard For Education
Many of the criticisms levelled at exams as a framework for learning and a means of assessment have validity. There have been valiant attempts over the years to provide a balance between formal assessment and coursework-based, teacher-assessed learning, and this trend rightly continues in many vocational and technical courses. However, despite their drawbacks, exams do encourage and promote a much wider set of skills and values than is often acknowledged by their child-centred opponents. – Unherd
The Anonymous Armies Of Culture Cops Who Actually Police The Internet
“What sometimes gets obscured is the fact that many online-censorship decisions are made not by powerful actors” — for instance, senior execs at Facebook or Twitter — “imposing their will on average internet denizens, but by an army of users who have, in effect, been deputized as censors” — for instance, moderators at Reddit or the people who report tweets they find offensive to Twitter. “This massive, mostly anonymous and pseudonymous group of internet culture cops is doing a large and likely growing share of the daily work of content-policing.” Jesse Singal looks into who they are and why they do it. – Nautilus
If COVID Means Audiences Can’t Sit Through These Shows, Then They Can Walk Through Them
“Now several companies are attempting variations on what is sometimes called promenade theater — outdoor productions in which audiences move as they follow the action. The form — a cousin to street theater — has a long tradition, particularly in Europe, but has new appeal in the United States this summer because of the relative ease of keeping patrons apart outdoors.” – The New York Times
Five Months Into The Pandemic, How Are The National Theatres In England, Scotland, And Wales Holding Up?
Some better than others. The big, building-based, high-overhead companies in England, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Co., are “haemorrhaging money,” while their smaller counterparts in Wales and Scotland, without theatre buildings to maintain, are doing surprisingly well. Lyn Gardner reports. – The Stage
Tribune Company Closing Newsrooms At Five Papers, Including New York And Orlando
Not to worry (yet): the papers will continue to publish. But since most newsroom employees have been working from home for months and the timeline for safely returning to offices isn’t clear, Tribune Co. execs have decided to stop paying for the real estate. The papers are the New York Daily News, Orlando Sentinel, The Morning Call of Allentown (Pa.), the Carroll County Times (Maryland), and the Capital Gazette in Annapolis (Md.), site of the 2018 newsroom shooting. – Yahoo! (AP)
Tate Galleries To Eliminate Half Of All Retail Jobs
“Tate has announced 313 redundancies across its commercial enterprises, which include staff who work in publishing and in gallery shops, cafes and restaurants in London, Liverpool and St Ives. … The figure – almost half of the 640 workforce – is bigger than the 200 redundancies which had previously been speculated on.” – The Guardian
Singer Trini Lopez, 83, Of COVID
At the peak of his popularity he was asked by guitar manufacturer Gibson to design two models, the Trini Lopez Standard and the Lopez Deluxe, owners of which include Dave Grohl and Noel Gallagher. In the mid-60s he was releasing as many as five albums a year, though that slowed in the late 70s. While he continued performing, he released very little music until 2000, when he began recording again and released a further six albums. – The Guardian
Second City Tries To Give Itself An Anti-Racist Makeover — Will It Work This Time?
“In interviews with more than 20 past and present performers, staff members and others, as well as with the leadership, the challenge of making these enormous changes becomes clear. This is at least the fifth time Second City has tried to reconcile the concerns of employees of color. … Yet the culture that many found deeply offensive was ingrained for decades.” – The New York Times
Media Mogul Sumner Redstone, 97
“Raised in a Boston tenement with a shared bathroom, … Sumner Redstone [was] a combative and daring dealmaker who in his 60s turned his family’s movie theater chain into one of the world’s largest media empires, with holdings that included Paramount Pictures film studios, CBS, MTV and the publishing house Simon & Schuster.” – The Washington Post
COVID Strikes Bolshoi And Mariinsky Ballets
According to reports on the Russian broadcast network RBC, one dancer at the Bolshoi (where rehearsals for the fall are underway) has gotten sick and 59 dancers and rehearsal pianists have been quarantined. At the Mariinsky, where opera performances are underway and the ballet Giselle opens on Aug. 13, “two or three” dancers are ill, classes and rehearsals are suspended, and company members who aren’t performing that day have been asked to stay out of the theater. – Gramilano (Milan)
Closet Cleaning
For a lot of us, these last few months have provided an opportunity to clean out and organize our closets, cupboards, garages, and workshops. (Stick with me, there will be a point to this.) – Doug Borwick